Happy Employees are Productive Employees

Browsing through my business related links this morning I ran onto this story at Business Pundit. The story references back to an interview with David Sirota, co-author of The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want (Wharton School Publishing).

Mr. Sirota shares some of his insights into what is motivating people in the workforce today, and the benefits to productivity that may be achieved. I found the comments on job security, economic security and retraining very interesting. In my own experiences we practice many of these particular principles. We try to retrain rather than layoff, and often try to balance the positive contributions of employees when they present a difficult situation. We are often told by our employees that we give people too many chances. Maybe this is true, but sometimes we succeed with these people.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, but if you are looking for some insight into how your management style may be perceived by those you manage, these stories are worth a read.