06 Nov The Social Responsibility to Generate Employee Happiness
Now here’s a really interesting article from Forbes…
According to a recent survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM_ã_s Institute for Business Value, CEOs identify _ã–creativity_ã as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future. The link may initially not be intuitive, but spawning creativity in the workforce comes back to corporate social responsibility. While corporate responsibility is often used in reference to the organization_ã_s interaction with outside communities, it also touches upon how members of the organization are actually treated and valued. How they are treated determines both self-perception and performance within the workplace and is correlated with life happiness in general.
Writers, business leaders and psychologists have long hypothesized about the link between work environments and creativity, and the challenges in harnessing natural human creativity to optimize performance. One scientist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, explains the optimal state of mind, when creativity is at its highest, as _ã–flow._ã Flow is when our minds and bodies are stretched to their limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something worthwhile and difficult.
The link between happiness and creative _ã–flow_ã is explained in a Scientific American article that chronicles the results of a study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. The study found that _ã–With positive mood, you actually get more access to things you would normally ignore_ã_ Instead of looking through a porthole, you have a landscape or panoramic view of the world._ã In other words, the results suggest that happiness makes people more receptive to information of all kinds, and therefore results in greater creative thought processes. (Note: it can also lead to greater distraction, so read the article).
Studies show that positive employees outperform negative employees in terms of productivity, sales, energy levels, turnover rates and healthcare costs…
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