Employees are in need of a pick-me-up: In a recent article from the Huffington Post, psychologist Douglas LaBier cites a study which found that nearly a quarter of workers around the world are depressed, with people’s experience at work cited as the primary source of depression. In fact, 92% of those surveyed linked the state of their mental health to their job. LaBier also points to a ComPsych survey that associates two-thirds of employees with unprecedented levels of stress, with 29% feeling so stressed that they’re often unable to be effective at all, during the workday.
These statistics paint a grim picture of ailing workplaces filled with unhappy workers. How does this affect an organization’s bottom-line — and what can be done to change it?
The first step toward healing and optimizing these environments is to rethink companies as networked communities of information, people and relationships — not merely isolated parts and bodies. But why should employers care about these internal networks? Rob Cross and Andrew Parker, in The Hidden Power of Social Networks, argue that the benefits and urgency of recognizing and investing in these networks are two-fold: 1) there is diagnostic value in understanding how the organization functions and how work is (or is not) completed, and 2) performance, learning, and innovation are all affected by how network connectivity is designed and managed — all of which has a direct result on the company’s bottom-line.
Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, authors of Connected, argue that networks are dynamic — not static. By identifying their human social hubs, companies can spread information and ideas more efficiently, strategically affecting and reaching more individuals within the company, while simultaneously ramping up their organizational happiness quotient. This sort of networked approach to organizational functioning demonstrates the interrelated triangularity between the social workplace, profitability, and employee happiness. What’s more, happiness is actually contagious within these organizational networks: make one employee happy, and colleagues three degrees away will likely be happier, too.
Social connection doesn’t just make us happier — it makes us better workers. Studies show that positive employees outperform negative employees in terms of productivity, sales, energy levels, turnover rates, and healthcare costs. According to Shawn Achor, Harvard researcher and author of The Happiness Advantage, optimistic sales people outperform their pessimistic counterparts by up to 37%. People who expressed more positive emotions while negotiating business deals did so more effectively and successfully than those who were more neutral or negative. The benefits can be seen across industries and job functions — even doctors with a positive mindset are 50% more accurate when making diagnoses than those that are negative.
This isn’t to say that organizations should encourage endless water cooler conversations, but rather foster a balance of individual and group activities. A workplace behavioral study found that social connections at work lead to workers who are more individualized learners, committed to personal efficiency and the cultivation of their skill sets. Christakis and Fowler explain how discovery and innovation is tied to groups, rather than individuals, and that collaboration is almost a prerequisite for majors breakthroughs. Inter-departmental knowledge sharing and collaboration boosts the overall level of organizational acumen and expertise, especially when companies take the time to invest in workplace strategies that balance the cultivation of social relationships and networking with isolated, focused work.
A recent IBM study of “social capital” among technology consultants found that connections can actually be monetized; the more socially connected an employee, the better they performed. Every email contact was valued at an additional $948 in revenue – further proving the power (and profitability) of connection. And yet, the slow creeping of social media into workplaces has been met with greetings ranging from complete banishment to warm welcoming. As workers, we have been conditioned to compromise “face-time” for “focus,” and to generally underestimate the extent that our “social portfolios” contribute to our value to the company, as well as the company’s worth. Quite simply, the idea of connectivity and social capital is one that is yet to be fully recognized — or tapped into.
The growth of social business software, like IBM Connections and Jive, and interaction design tactics, like gamification and digital community building may be foreign to most workplaces, but the tide is turning. These technical tools — in conjunction with strategic community building and optimized workspace spatial design are rapidly becoming integral to the health of a company. The value of socialization in the workplace is rooted in this sort of innovation and cross-disciplinary pollination, and its direct link to organizational happiness.
The statistics on workplace unhappiness demonstrate that employees are hungry for this type of change — now it’s time for management to recognize the link between happiness and the bottom-line. A happy workplace is a profitable workplace. And that’s something we can all smile about.
Nicole Skibola and Anna Akbari, PhD are the co-founders of Bricoler, a consultancy dedicated to creating more social workplaces and building communities, both online and offline.
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