The Effect of Happiness on Your Bottom Line

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Delivering Happiness Culture Coachsultant Sunny Grosso shares from her experience and insight as a pioneer of organizational design and workplace culture championing.


Sunny Grosso Effect of Happiness Bottom Line


As the most successful global companies continue to prove, it’s no secret that a happy employee is a productive employee. 

And that happy employees equal happy customers.

The happiest customers are the most loyal of customers, and in market terms, we’re now talking about your early-adopters. 

Sunny Grosso knows this firsthand as she has spent years studying the culture at Zappos and consulting with companies around the world on the matter. She describes happiness as “a range of positive emotions, from joy and pleasure to passion and purpose,” and says it has an impact on everything we do, from our mindset to our relationships to how productive we are at work.

The happiness coach, culture expert and thought leader began her journey on a mission to answer one question: How do we create a different workplace? In this Q&A, Ms. Grosso gives us a sneak peek into how she has advised some of the world’s strongest teams in creating their own culture of happiness through coupling human, and business sense.


Can you share a bit about your own journey into the theme of Happiness at work and why it means so much to you? Why is it so important?

After following the formula, working hard at university and getting a good job, I found myself surrounded by gray cubicle walls and soul-deadened co-workers that only seemed alive when they talked about the weekend. They were at work, in order to escape work. Was this really the success we were promised? I knew it wasn’t for me, so I went on a work crusade: from restaurant manager to wellness researcher to key roles in multiple start-ups. My happiness rose initially with each new venture, but sooner or later I found myself working for the weekend as well. I questioned myself in many ways, and our approach to work. But I hadn’t found a better way. I questioned myself in many ways, was there something wrong with me? And I questioned our approach as a society, what were we missing? Until a young CEO gave me the book “Delivering Happiness,” which answered so many of my own questions.

I was asked to join the founding team of consultants, and realized I could use my own checkered experience of work to change our collective experience of work.

My mission began by studying Zappos, positive psychology and other companies successfully scaling culture. I knew it was not only possible, but important to create the kind of workplace where people are inspired to do their best, not just for the organization or a paycheck, but importantly, for themselves first. From here, it would be sustainable. It needed to be a part of the culture.

 

Why is happiness at work so important to organizations?

 As the theme of happiness at work has become more popular with major companies focusing on employees wellbeing, we have seen the positive correlation between happiness and business results increase, and, become commonly known: A shift in happiness can lead to a 300% rise in innovation, 50% increase in productivity, and 147% higher earnings per share. With statistics like these, CEOs and leaders across the world overwhelmingly agree that culture and happiness are the new, and really the only sustainable, competitive advantage.

Faced with the challenges of new technologies nearly daily, information overload, the most stressed out generations yet, and fierce competition where adaptability and innovation are the forefront of every CEO’s mind, the question is less why happiness at work is important, but more how. How do we do create real happiness at work and realize the business results? Let’s caveat we’re talking about meaningful and sustained happiness, not the short-lived kind pleasures that happiness had been hijacked to mean today.

 

What is company culture and why is it important? Is there more to it than bean bags and foosball?

Culture is the sum of the beliefs, values and behaviors that define how things get done. Simply put, it’s how we do what we do. It affects everything from what information is shared, to how meetings are run to who is promoted, and ultimately, how successful a business is. Companies that focus on culture see three times the shareholder returns — that’s 580 percent higher returns and 22% higher profitability.

The theme of happiness comes into play when we consider the simple formula: happy employees = happy customers = successful company (and more meaningful lives). 

The next question is usually, how? That’s where the science of happiness comes in. There is a massive body research from the past 20 years available to help our employees, teams and organization thrive.

For example, purpose, or having meaning in life, is one element of happiness from the science. When we join a team or an organization, we are co-creating a shared sense of purpose. If alignment exists between employees, you can expect higher productivity and an elevated sense of accomplishment by members of the team. You see motivation beyond compensation, status or power kick in, which is far more personal and sustainable as it is driven by emotion and heart. 

 

What is Delivering Happiness doing to build cultures of Happiness in organizations across the world?

When Tony released the book Delivering Happiness, it went from an novel underdog (a business book about happiness?) to a global hit. It gave voice to a flaw in our approach to happiness that many individuals, leaders and employers around the world already felt. And offered a different path, where the individual and the organization both win.

After the book, we launched the company Delivering Happiness based on the demand to help people, companies and communities become happier and more successful with this approach. We see time and time again that people show up to places they believe in, as we help organizations uncover and align people’s beliefs to the organization’s, so they can do their best work there, raising their personal success and that of the business from the intrinsic, self driven level.

We’re now seeing some of the world’s largest organizations consciously designing culture and spending considerable resources to do so. Yet, the failure rate for culture change remains high, around 75%. That’s where we come in. With a simple roadmap any organization can use and our unique coach-sulting [coaching + consulting] approach, we’ve seen results like 30-year record sales, 60 to 600 applicants per month, and massive rollouts of happiness across government entities. I look forward to continue sharing these stories, along with our simple formula, some secrets to happiness, and a good dose of inspiration with companies around the world. 


A pioneer of the workplace culture industry and champion of happiness in organizations, Sunny is a highly sought-after coach, speaker, and consultant. Want to find out more about working personally with Sunny? Schedule a FREE Culture Call with us now... 

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