Happy -Invested In- Employees Even in a Virtual Environment

But we are socially distant!  Nonsense.  I did it in a combat zone. You can invest in people through virtual means.  Programs like Zoom, Slack and many others facilitate that.  Your personal smartphone is a nice place to start!  How about an unplanned call today to one of your people to see how they and their family are doing, learn more about how they are coping with this pandemic and give them a sense of hope.  Take all that I have written about in my book, jump on the internet and make it happen! 

According to a 2019 Gallup Poll, 65 percent of employees in today’s workforce are not engaged at work, meaning they are not psychologically committed to their jobs, happy in the workplace and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations. Gallup identified the causes of this disengagement as leaders and organizations who: failed to establish job expectations, listen to employee opinions, provide mission, purpose, and worth, offer praise, and generally show that they care for their people. Answers.com, in a study of the American worker, highlighted that more than 50 percent of employees claimed that their employer did not know if they were happy in their role, had an ongoing process to understand their job satisfaction and likelihood to stay at the company and understood what their future career goals were. This study is telling and goes on to describe the void employees are feeling about being heard, feeling engaged and having a sense of purpose in their job.

Happier or “invested in” soldiers produce better results regardless of the task, this I have witnessed firsthand. Happier or “invested in” employees help companies achieve higher profits. Jerry Dodson, the CEO of Parnassus Investments which manages the Parnassus Endeavor Fund, a top-performing mutual fund, focuses its investments in companies off the Fortune Magazine’s Top 100 Companies to Work For list. Dodson posits that elements that define a good workplace, from benefits like health insurance and childcare to cultural collegiality, advancement opportunities, and faith in management are linked to meaningful qualities that drive up stock prices, such as talent retention (leading to lower turnover costs) and increased productivity. “If you take good care of your employees, if you treat them well, if you pay them fairly, they’re going to work harder,” Dodson says, “If you don’t, there are many ways that they can sabotage your business.”