Keep The Happy People

Wow!

I just read this Yahoo article, The Secret to Having Happy Employees by Jay Goltz, and it touched me in a couple of ways.

First, of course, it's like, dang, he FIRED all the unhappy people? Wow, that's harsh!

Second, having worked with a lot of miserable people who did not fit the job and the job didn't fit them, it was a super smart move to make.

Goltz has an extremely valid point. In today's economic climate, there's a lot of people looking for work. Why on earth would he keep unhappy people on his payroll?

He was smart to set the unhappy people free. Many, many employees will stay, year after year, making everyone around them just as miserable as they are. They complain. They poison the workspace. They stress out the people who actually like their jobs.

Yes, I've seen all that before.

Good bosses sometimes have to make very difficult decisions. Goltz set the unhappy people free to seek new jobs that will hopefully be a better fit. It was a good business decision on his part, good for his company and good for the remaining staff.

Again, having worked with people who are just miserable to be around, day after day, I can see how his difficult decision has benefited the company. I hope that he also got rid of any supervisors who worked to make their staff miserable. There ARE two sides to that coin.

Don't get me wrong now, I'm not saying that staff should bow and scrape when the boss goes by, but as I often tell my co-workers (and even people on the phone), "They pay me good money to do my job. The least I can do is be nice about it."

There is an important lesson here for both businesses and employees. Not "don't worry, be happy" but more on the order of "happy people work harder and will stick with the company through thick and thin..."

(I'm human. There are days when my job is not a happy place -- filled with high stress situations and dealing with difficult people. But in general, I have a good job, I get paid well, and I appreciate it. It doesn't hurt me to let it show.)

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109063/the-secret-to-having-happy-employees?mod=career-leadership