Proof – Fun Changes Behavior

I really like this photo for several reasons: 1. Participants were provided a choice as to whether or not to participate. 2. Participants bought into the fun and modified their behavior 3. It’s a great example of the power of fun in action.

Now, I want you to take a minute and just imagine that this escalator were inside your place of business, and for whatever the reason, your company wanted employees to use the stairs. What approach would they take? Would someone in your company brainstorm creative ways to get buy-in, or would they simply send out a compulsory memo and shut-off the escalator? Both approaches will achieve the desired result, but which approach will make employees happier?

If you are thinking – so what? who cares? what a silly waste of time and resources, think again. According to one Economic Study, Happy People are 12% more productive than their unhappy counterparts. At the University of Rochester, Ryan O’Loughlin’s doctoral dissertation showed the linkage between happiness and creativity. Therefore, it follows that employee happiness directly shows up on the bottom line.

Take a look at the above formula, it’s my employee happiness growth formula hypothesis: Growth = Happy Employees x Positive Environment x Product or Svc. Differentiated x Empathy x Customer Satisfaction. As you can see from this formula, if you assign a low to high value of 0 (we don’t do it) to 5 (we excel at it) to any one of the values, then you can quickly identify target areas for improvement. As you can quickly see, assigning a 0 to any one of the values impacts the entire chain and growth is impacted, perhaps not immediately, but I would argue that it will eventually show up in time – it always does.

Do the math, how would your company rate?