Takeaways from San Francisco on employee well-being
What Healthy Workers learned from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google on how to create the best environment for employees.
Having great employee well-being has become such an important goal for companies in the San Fransisco Bay Area over the years. And rightly so! It has proven to improve engagement and productivity significantly which in turn results in amazing products.
It seems very logical, but in the Netherlands this is something that has just recently been on the minds of corporate CEOs. This is why, we at Healthy Workers are hard at work to help companies prioritise their employee’s well-being.
The minds behind Healthy Workers took a field trip to San Fransisco to learn from the frontrunners on employee well-being like Facebook, Google, Dropbox and LinkedIn. They found that there were things they could learn from these companies, but also things these companies could learn from Healthy Workers! These were the biggest take aways:
1. Prioritising employee well-being is not just about getting employees to do their best work. It’s about getting the best employees.
Investing in the well-being of your employees can increase engagement, happiness at work and ultimately productivity. However, it was notable that the companies in San Fransisco were perhaps more concerned with prioritising employee well-being in order to get the most talented people to work for them.
Even though many of these companies aren’t competitors in their respective fields, every company in San Fransisco seems to be competing for experts and talent. So the working environment better be good in order to attract them. Facebook in particular prioritised above all others, attracting the most talented people. Their theory is that you shouldn’t focus on making the best product, you should focus on creating the best team and this will result in the best product. This is why there are a lot of cool facilities on the Facebook campus that certainly play a role in employees’ decision to work at Facebook.
Focus on creating the best team and the best product will follow.
Other companies that were visited also seemed to have amazing facilities and catering simply to attract the best talent. For example, Dropbox provides extremely high quality meals, made by top end chefs. Breakfast, lunch and dinner is provided and all of this is included for all employees. The offices at Dropbox were also impressive in their design and aesthetics. This seems to play a role in attracting the best employees as well.
At Healthy Workers we understand the motivation for these ‘perks’, but we think there is a balance to be found in what attracts talent on a surface level and what allows employees to work optimally. It should be about more than just perks. Which brings us to the next take away:
2. Engagement doesn’t come from perks, it comes from having clear goals
Perks are there to attract talent and to unburden them from things that could add unnecessary stress (cooking, laundry etc.). However, these things do not necessarily do anything for the level of engagement of an employee in their work. Engagement comes from having a clear direction toward clear goals. This is why at Google each employee has their own OKR (objectives and key results) which should contribute to loftier long term goals of the team. I’m sure most people know how discouraging it can be when there is vagueness about what is expected from you. Clarity of goals takes away lack of focus.
It should be noted that clear goals will only promote higher engagement when employees have a hand in formulating these goals themselves and when they are given the freedom and autonomy to figure out how to reach them. There needs to be trust in employees’ abilities and expertise. Which brings us to the next takeaway:
3. A culture of trust needs to be nurtured from the top down
Healthy Workers’ own research into employee well-being has shown that the majority of employees do not trust their employer nor do they feel trusted by them. This culture of mistrust results in low engagement and low productivity due to a lack of loyalty and care for the company. It is something Healthy Workers is deeply concerned with.
Everyone should be approachable regardless of their position.
At the companies that were visited, there are structures in place that safe guard a culture of trust. These structures are being implemented from the highest positions. For example, Mark Zuckerburg seems to be very approachable working among his employees and holding weekly assemblies where people can ask him whatever they want. Employees also have weekly one on ones with their managers where all issues and grievances can be addressed. The general rule at Facebook seems to be that everyone should be approachable regardless of their position. The people that the HW founders spoke to, felt that this was being achieved at Facebook which is an amazing feat for an office with thousands of employees. In general it’s pretty bizar and ironic how much the employees of Facebook trust their employers considering how distrustful some people are of Facebook.
This culture of trust goes both ways. At Facebook and LinkedIn they consider their employees owners of their product. This shows a confidence in the abilities of their employees. At Facebook everyone can test the messenger app and every developer has access to tools to put something live. When employees see a problem with the app they are encouraged to go ahead and fix it. There is no bureaucracy or hierarchy in their way of taking ownership of the product. This all sends such a powerful message of trust which seemed to nurture the loyalty of employees and motivate them to make the best product.
Companies make the mistake of trying to gain their employees trust simply by hiring hard working people for high salaries. This doesn’t work. It needs to be implemented from the top down. Policies and structures need to be put in place that create transparency at every level as well as show trust in the employee.
4. There is no done. There should always be change, adaptation, and improvement
It was notable that there was a certain mentality that dominated at the companies that were visited. It is a mentality that Healthy Workers shares. This is a mentality of continuous improvement of employee well-being. A state of mind that the job is never done. There is no end point to this journey.
A commitment to employee well-being should be perpetual.
A mistake we see a lot of companies making that are concerned with employee well-being, is the assumption that the job will be done at one point: employees are happy and healthy and productivity and engagement are high, therefore we are done and this no longer needs to be a priority. No. These things are constantly changing and being influenced by all kinds of factors which is why a commitment to employee well-being should be perpetual. This is how companies stay successful.
Companies shouldn’t strive for an end goal. The goal itself should be to change and continuously improve. This of course, is the core of what we do at Healthy Workers. We are continuously taking steps to improve employee well-being based on scientifically gathered data.
5. A great working environment goes beyond the physical space
At Healthy Workers we focus on improving every aspect of working environments in order to get the most out of employees. We have found that there are 3 aspects of a working environment in which stressors can exist that influence an employee’s well-being:
- Physical: this has to do with the climate, lighting, acoustics and the physical facilities (catering, sport, etc.)
- Social: this has to do with communication and transparency. This aspect can be improved with the kind of policies and structures that nurture a culture of trust as mentioned above.
- Intrinsic: This has to do with the culture of a company at a more abstract level. It has to do with whether people feel safe. Whether it’s physically safe, safe to make mistakes or if people are safe from losing their job. This also has to do with feelings of justice. Are people being credited for their work? Are the right people being promoted? All of these things have a great influence on employee well-being and thereby their stress level, engagement and productivity.
At the companies in San Fransisco there was a lot of focus on the physical aspect of working environments which resulted in beautiful offices and amazing facilities. It was clear that the most successful companies that were visited had also prioritised these other aspects of the working environment. You could say that this was reflected in their product which was extremely successful.
This confirmed for us how important each aspect of the working environment is, and that prioritising just one is not enough. There is a balance to be found in continuously improving each one.
Improvements don’t mean much if they are not based on measurements and data
A lot was learned from these frontrunners of employee well-being. During this visit, the Healthy Workers founders saw that even these frontrunners can learn from Healthy Workers in regards to measuring the employee well-being.
It’s something we see in the Netherlands a lot: companies throwing money at the problem of overly stressed employees without much enquiry into what might be the cause. And while these companies in San Fransisco seem to have a pretty good idea about what effectively gets the best work from their employees, there is even more ground to be won using scientifically proven methods to measure the well-being of employees, the stressors in their environment and their impact on the performance of employees.
Looks like the future is bright for a global Healthy Workers.
Healthy Workers makes employee well-being measurable. We help companies create the best possible working environment for happy employees and successful organisations.
Do you strive for satisfied, productive employees that excel in an optimal work environment? Please contact us for more information.
This article is based on an interview with Niels de Keizer, co-founder of Healthy Workers.
