A Happy and Profitable Organization

Is your organization a Happy organization?

As an MSME owner, you always dream of creating an organization where the employees think of the organization first before everything else. You like to think that they will always think of putting more and more efforts in creating the organization that is not only profitable, but also is liked by everyone including its own employees and their families.

How will you then define a Happy organization? Perhaps, it is an organization where every employee puts in the best of everything he or she has. They work with full attention and involvement as they love what they do.

It is implied that they produce the best results and hence the best profits for the organization.

But ironically, it may not be the story on the ground ! You may see a lot of friction, hidden motives, jealousy, politics and infighting; spoiling the show within the organization.

A lot depends on how your employees think about the workplace. Do they indeed feel like coming to office every day? Do they love what they are doing? Do they like to work in the team they are working in?

 

What do the Happy countries do?

My daughter went to Sweden sometime back for an event called Techfest. The way she described about the country was proof enough to know why Sweden ranks in top five countries in the world in the OCED index for work-life balance. Here are couple of things that she noticed while being there:

It was amazing to see how far Sweden has progressed with gender diversity and creating a true level playing field for all. Swedes indeed don’t differentiate between men and women at work, at public places, at various events or anywhere else. This goes to an extent that there are no separate toilets for men & women – it’s unisex all over. (We see unisex hair stylists and beauty salons in Indian major cities these days, which is perhaps just a beginning!)

 

The work culture

Perhaps all swedes divide their day of 24 hours in 3 parts – 8 hours for work, 8 hours for family & friends and 8 hours for sleep – What a beautiful balance ! Flexible work hours is a very common thing at most of the workplaces.

Parents can take a day off if the child is sick. The government reimburses them for 80 percent of the lost wages. This all is over and above the 480 days paid leave for each child you have, and you can split those days the way you want ! Sweden encourages fathers to take more time off for the children than most other countries.

It is about Work - Joy Balance

As Stacey Ferreira, Co-Founder and CEO, Forge says, “There is an irrefutable correlation between personal and professional lives. Stress in one area bleeds out to stress in other parts of life. A study from Oregon University found that a happy home life begets happiness and productivity in the workplace as well. If you want to be a happy person, you need happiness in all areas of your life. This happiness stems from living a work-life balance that aligns your values and priorities appropriately.”

 

Does it all come for free?

Here comes the real lesson for our industry and particularly for MSME sector. One may think this as too much of liberty and freedom for the employees which can hamper the productivity of the organization. But the real story is, Sweden attracts the best workforce from the world & people just love to work there. Highly educated employees with a very low attrition rate enables the companies to plan better in long term.

How it works to organization’s benefit?

You may be astonished at the number of start-ups in Sweden. Sweden had over 10,000 start-ups in 2019, despite a population of only 10.4 Million people !

Some of the famous Swedish companies include Volvo, Ikea, Electrolux, Ericsson, Essity, H&M, Skanska, Spotify, Vattenfall…

While the organizations across the world are realizing the benefits of work from home (WFM), at Sweden it has been a practice for many years !

In the nutshell, we can look upon Sweden as a clear example of how to create profitable and happy organizations rather than creating rude and inhuman organizations that must struggle for retaining the best workforce or else must compromise with a substandard workforce !

Finally, it’s about profits and what is the better way than creating it by having happy people around you !!

© Nitin Kirloskar

Credits :

1)    https://commuterbenefits.com/2019/09/learn-work-life-balance-from-sweden/

2)    https://startupstash.com/swedish-startups/

3)    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-critical-lessons-india-create-womans-workplace-sriram-subramanian/

4)    The Happiness Value of Work-Life BalanceThere's more to work-life balance than hours spent at home and at work. By Stacey Ferreira, Co-Founder And Ceo, Forge