Creating happy and productive employees is about fostering an environment where they see themselves as a part of something important and where that something important means something to them. When the company is a cause each employee can rally around, they are more productive, very engaged and very willing to put forth the effort and energy to do the work that needs to be done for the company.  You get that kind of passion out of people who are part of a non-profit organization, such as people who are very enthusiastic about getting a certain candidate into office; they will become very centered around that cause and will start aligning the work they are doing with that cause.  Aligning your company’s goals with your employees to where the things they are doing make them feel good and the reason behind what they are doing makes them feel good, then you’ve got really strong energy being utilized to bring productivity in.  It’s important that you are really feeding that drive, that desire, that ambition, that interest and inspiring your team to bring it to work and bring nothing less than 110%.

How do you inspire this kind of passion in your employees?  You must create a community, create mutual goals for your whole business that will benefit everybody, and make your employees more willing to give and receive help.  You need to create a VISION and communicate that VISION.  It wouldn’t work very well if you had an organization that was trying to get a candidate elected and nobody knew who the candidate was or what he stood for.  If you haven’t communicated your company’s vision, how can you expect that your people are pulling behind anything?  They don’t have a cause; they don’t have anything that makes them say “I want THIS to happen.”  You’ve got to get that vision out there.

Once you’ve communicated your vision to your employees, it’s important to keep that vision in front of them, to keep them engaged.  If you don’t get together with your team on a regular basis to talk about the vision and the plan, they tend to forget about it.  “Out of sight is out of mind.”  You’ve got to keep this in front of people by having regular one-on-ones with each employee.  You’ve got to have a regularly scheduled meeting with each employee.  If you aren’t doing that, how can you ensure over time that they still have the vision, can see the vision, can connect the vision to what they need to do?  You need to conduct your one-on-one discussions with CARE.  It can’t be focused on, “Let’s look at numbers from last week, and talk about what you accomplished in your goals from last week.”  There’s got to be a perspective on the part of the employee that there’s a person on the other side of the desk that cares about them.

For example:  I had a young administrative assistant working for me when a big first-time home-buyer stimulus package came out with which you could get up to $8000 as a rebate from the government as long as you lived in your first-bought home for 2-3 years. It came up in one of our one-on-ones that she was thinking about renting again instead of buying, but I knew she was really good at saving her money and was very money-minded. I suggested she should look into this stimulus package, which she did, and she ended up with 20% equity in her home within two years.  When she married and moved to Germany, she chose to continue a working relationship with me because she knew I CARED about her; and that tied the vision, my employee and everything all together with glue.

It’s a good rule of thumb to have your employees set their own goals at these periodic sessions.  Generally, you should try to make sure that for every two business goals they set, they set one personal goal.  The personal goal could be that they want to learn something new, improve their health or try coaching a soccer team.  But the idea is this: if they reach these personal goals, it will improve what they are able to do at the office.  It’s going to make them better people and, therefore, better employees. Then they can see a singular focus where the company’s doing better, they’re doing better, and where they’re being cared for and appreciated.

Another key to producing happy employees is to allow them to be true to themselves; don’t foster a “workaholic is best” atmosphere.  Put family first, even if your employees don’t have children.  Try not to create an environment where taking time off is frowned upon, but make it feasible and desirable to work a 40 hour work week.  Give them time and flexibility to pick kids up from school or to care for an aging parent.  Allow them – and YOU – to have some balance.  I’m not talking about making it so your employees don’t have to work or about implementing a 2-hour siesta lunch; that isn’t in alignment with what most entrepreneurs are looking for, and most employees are more than willing to put in the time necessary to do their work and do it well.  But you need to actively be talking about what they are looking for in their work-life balance.  If there’s a misalignment and you’re not giving them enough to do and they’re not engaged enough, they’ll look for something else to engage them.  If you’re giving them too much, they’ll figure out a way to move away from what you’re asking them to do or put in half-effort or something else.  It needs to be an active conversation about work-life balance to help you  understand truly what motivates them.