[acb-hsp] Building Better Businesses by Closing the Happiness Gap

[peter altschul]

Building Better Businesses By Closing The Happiness Gap
  Written by: Ryan Vanderbilt
  As work becomes our lives, it becomes more and more important 
for us to be happy at work.  But few of us are.  A revolution in 
workplace happiness would make us healthier and more productive.  
How can we get there?
  If two magnets are separated by too much distance, they won't 
have any impact on each other.  But, if something helps move them 
a bit closer, they will gravitate towards each other and connect.  
Technology can be used in a similar way.  It can connect you to 
other people, skills, tools, and trigger new ways of thinking and 
working; it can create an "assisted serendipity." More than ever, 
products and companies help connect us to people and information.  
But does merely creating access have anything to do with making 
better lives and better economies?
  Because today, we have more access than ever, but 
unfortunately, we are still largely unhappy: 80% of people 
dislike what they do for a living Out of this incredible number 
of unhappy people, comes a huge opportunity to create products to 
solve this issue, and improve our economy.  A few companies, like 
Dream Champs The Energy Project and Loosecubes have begun to 
tackle this problem.  And they have the potential to make big 
impact: Happy workers correlate to raising sales by 37%, 
productivity by 31%, and task accuracy by 19%.  If we're happy at 
work, the U.S.  could gain $300 billion in productivity each year 
But to move the four-fifths of our population from disengaged to 
fulfilled, we have a long way to go.
  "Studies show that people are much more productive and healthy 
when they can connect their values with their work."
  One way to do this is to build companies that have a structural 
alignment of personal interests and skills, with the mission of 
the company.  Studies show that people are much more productive 
and healthy when they can connect their values with their work.  
People believe this, but for some reason it isn't yet reflected 
in the way we behave.  There seems to be a sense of "I can't do 
that now," or "I'll figure that out for my next job." This might 
be because people don't realize they're surrounded by a fluid 
network at any given moment, that might reveal new opportunity.
  This is where technology can help.  Beyond restructuring 
companies to incorporate collaborative spaces, flexible hours, 
and encouragement of natural talents, it's important we build 
tools so anyone can easily connect to companies and individuals 
with strong value or interest alignment.  With such an enormous 
chunk of the population unhappy at work, startups and innovators 
have a big, and potentially lucrative problem to solve.  Imagine 
a society where people interview companies instead of companies 
interviewing people.  Or one where we're able to step outside the 
box and create something new with the network of people around 
us--it's starting to happen already, and we can speed it up.
  Addressing the disengagement crisis is as much a health 
initiative as a work initiative.  We spend the majority of our 
waking lives working, so ultimately, work is our life.  And 
increasingly, we overlap our work with our personal lives.  Soon, 
the two seeming separate will be an archaic construct.  Mood at 
work will leak into our personal lives more than it already does.  
So that means that bolstering good psychology at the office not 
only helps the economy, it also fosters the health of families, 
friends, and communities.
  People will flourish as we all continue to push and experiment 
with new ways to approach why we work, how we work, and what we 
do for our work.  As Simon Sinek said: "Innovation is the 
application of technology to solve human problems."
  Ryan is a former creative lead at Google Creative Lab and 
design director at Anomaly.
  Copyright 2012 Mansueto Ventures, LLC.