New research conducted by leading business consultancy and executive coaching firm, Mary Taylor & Associates, has shown that recognising and embracing behavioural, cultural and societal elements stemming from the earliest days of our species can lead to a happier, more committed workforce.
THE HUMAN CONDITION
For much of human history, the majority of people led hunter-gatherer lifestyles, characterised by close-knit, long-term cooperation and flexible relationships between numerous individuals. These communities featured relative equality among members of the group, direct access to leaders, opportunities to participate in decision-making, and high levels of personal responsibility and autonomy.
In stark contrast, 21st century businesses often consist of rigid hierarchies, large group sizes, relative inequality between people, and low levels of personal choice, even about fundamentals such as when, how, and where to carry out tasks.
These fundamental differences, which have occurred only very recently (evolutionarily speaking), mean that people often function and respond in many aspects in the same ways as our distant ancestors. As a result, they often conflict with modern working systems and practices.
What follows is proof that we can all learn from our evolutionary past to build better, more inclusive, productive, and happier workplaces.
ACCESS TO LEADERS AND PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING
Of the modern workforce surveyed in the research, over 40% said they were, at best, ambivalent about their employment, with 15% reporting they were actively unhappy. The research revealed a strong correlation between this lack of satisfaction and lack of access to senior leaders, with only 12% of frustrated respondents having direct access.
Happiness and satisfaction levels rose progressively with increased access to leaders, to over 80% of participants who were ‘very happy’ and ‘extremely happy’ in their work, citing significant direct access to senior leaders.
Beyond access to senior staff, only 12% of unhappy and dissatisfied workers reported having any significant participation in decision-making. Levels of participation in decision-making and satisfaction rose in tandem, culminating in 71.9% of those surveyed who were ‘extremely happy’, enjoying significant participation in these processes.
RESPONSIBILITY AND AUTONOMY
85.4% of participants who were ‘extremely happy’ in their work reported having significant responsibility and status, while only 12% of dissatisfied workers said they experienced significant responsibility and status.
Following the same pattern, increased happiness and satisfaction levels were recorded with progressively greater levels of autonomy at work. Specifically, 85.3% of participants who reported being ‘extremely happy’ in their work indicated having significant autonomy and independence.
HARNESSING OUR NATURAL STATE FOR BUSINESS
Whilst there are self-evidently many contributing factors to any individual’s happiness and satisfaction at work, and none of the above elements (either by themselves or in combination) can be said definitively to be ‘the cause’ of differing levels of professional happiness and satisfaction, this does not diminish the clear, very strong correlations.
Such strong results overwhelmingly suggest that to increase general levels of happiness and satisfaction at work, companies should seek to provide employees at all levels with at least some degree of direct access to senior leaders, participation in decision-making, responsibility and status, and autonomy and independence in their work.
The fact that so many individuals who are happy have high levels of these factors provides food for thought around how to increase involvement in decision-making or autonomy at work for entry-level employees. Where such factors are often negligible, or simply not present at all, unhappiness levels are particularly high, which has a knock-on impact on the business.
Should companies be interested in increasing the happiness and satisfaction of all employees? The answer is obviously ‘yes’ for common quantitative issues, such as staff retention, reducing days lost to sickness, operational efficiency, and increased performance, among others. But there are also the qualitative benefits, such as staff loyalty, brand reputation and company culture, just to mention a few.
Making changes such as increasing direct access to leaders or increasing involvement in decision-making for all levels of employees can actually be reasonably simple and low-cost options for most companies.
For example, even 5-10 minutes of direct access to a senior leader by an entry-level employee once every few months can produce significant returns, not only for the employee but also for the leader, where a new and fresh perspective or ‘insider knowledge’ can produce invaluable insights.
Mind-boggling amounts of time, money, and energy are continuously spent around the globe on trying to find the latest ‘hack’, technique, leadership style, algorithm, and so on, to solve business or work problems or increase or decrease some metric or another. Occasionally, these work brilliantly, but more often than not, they don’t.
Conversely, what are usually routinely ignored are the ‘natural’, relatively cheap and simple interventions that can produce really radical shifts in business and professional performance and results.
Suppose a company is interested in producing disproportionately large returns on investment for the time, money, and effort being spent on overcoming a range of issues. In that case, these results suggest that optimising business procedures to take advantage of our natural, inbuilt, evolutionary characteristics and behaviours will, more often than not, contribute significantly to achieving the desired results.
Research was gathered from a population of full and part-time employees, with approximately even spreads across genders, ages, job levels, US geographical regions and household incomes, with a margin of error of +/- 5.573%
