{"id":10947,"date":"2021-01-31T09:22:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T09:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arliemediadesign.com\/?p=10947"},"modified":"2025-03-29T11:50:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T11:50:53","slug":"happy-workplaces-are-more-successful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.happy.co.uk\/blogs\/happy-workplaces-are-more-successful\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Workplaces are More Successful"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Great workplaces perform better on the stock market<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Alex Edmans, then at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, analyzed<\/a> the result of investing in the companies listed in the Great Place to Work listings over the last 25 years. His detailed econometric study found a difference, compared to the stock market, of 3.5% a year. An investment which would have returned $100,000 in a tracker fund would have achieved $236,000 from investing in companies that focus on creating great workplaces. [1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the evidence, you might wonder why investment funds tend not to focus on how good a workplace is. Well, there is at least one that does: Jerome Dobson explains<\/a> how he decided to create “a fund that only invested in organizations where employees were really happy”, on the advice of the creator of the Best Companies to Work For list (the list used by Edmans for his analysis).[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set up in 2005 with just $600,000, the Fund now manages $2 billion and has been rated in the top 1% of US investment funds for its ten year return. Its stated focus<\/a> is clear: “The Parnassus Workplace Fund invests in companies with outstanding workplaces. The philosophy behind this fund is that companies whose employees love going to work will do better than companies with poor workplaces.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course it could be the case that a strongly performing company leads to strong engagement, rather than vice versa. Marcus Buckingham, previously of Gallup and now behind the \u2018StrengthsFinder\u2019 approach, \u2018concludes from various longitudinal studies that it is engagement that leads to performance, and this is a four times stronger relationship than performance leading to engagement\u2019[3]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Happy hospitals save lives<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is also true outside the commercial sector. The Kings Fund in London compared the levels of staff engagement<\/a> in British hospital to a variety of factors. Few people are surprised to learn that patients were happy if staff were happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However it is also the case that less patients died when staff were happy and engaged. For every 96 people that died in hospitals were staff engagement was strongest, 103 died where staff engagement was weakest. That is equivalent to 5,000 deaths a year in the UK alone. Or 5,000 lives being saved from engaged workplace cultures. [4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gallup\u2019s research has identified 12 core elements of employee engagement that they believe predict performance. These range from knowing what is expected of you to having the opportunity to do what you do best every day, from having a supervisor who seems to care about you to staff feeling their opinions count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Clear benefits from happy and engaged staff<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A wide range of surveys have identified clear benefits from happy and engaged staff:<\/p>\n\n\n\n