Yazmin Grey

The impact of Workplace Culture on Employee Happiness, and its indirect correlation to Productivity and Innovation

Table of Contents

Relationship to CPT Error: Reference source not found

Introduction Error: Reference source not found

Problem Statement and Justification Error: Reference source not found

Literature Review -- Analysis of Related Work Error: Reference source not found

Proposed Solution Approach Error: Reference source not found

Research Design Error: Reference source not found

Data Collection Error: Reference source not found

Data Analysis Error: Reference source not found

Proposed Work Plan Error: Reference source not found

References Error: Reference source not found

Abstract

Productivity and innovation are two key components of an organization that go hand in hand. A company with good work culture can greatly influence the way its employees move forward, towards an innovative future. Conversely, if the work culture in a company is unsatisfying to its employees, then that company tends to suffer exponentially and lag behind its competitors in terms of productivity and innovation. One such example is XYZ Marketing Solutions. XYZ’s work culture has almost been stagnant with the same set of people and absence of proper work teams, for the last 20 years. As a result of this, the company underwent major data security threats/viral attacks, failure to deliver client requirements which in turn, has compromised the company’s reputation recently. In newer companies such as Google and Amazon, innovative approaches in work culture have been taken over the last 10 years that have made these two companies the most satisfying to work for, in terms of employee happiness. Excellent work culture practices have facilitated in pushing these 2 giants ahead towards global market dominance. This research is being conducted to study work culture for a specific set of people, namely developers in the IT department of XYZ and how it has influenced productivity and/or innovation.

Keywords: Work Culture, employee happiness, productivity, innovation

Introduction

For ages, companies have dwelt on the incorrect notion that a high pressure work culture helps in achieving desired goals in a timely manner. Leaders who believed in a transactional, non-motivational approach, in the 1990’s even believed that confining genius software coders in a room for a couple of days working overnight and odd hours would solve the problem and propel them towards success. This mentality although, may have worked for some, is not necessarily the key solution to employee productivity and innovation in the long run. If anything, these measures have cost several companies millions of dollars in paying for healthcare and lawsuits for instituting poor work culture. Excessive stress and chronically working overtime can create unwanted problems in the work area, causing decrease in productivity and weakening the likelihood of innovative minds. According to APA (American Psychological Association) over $500 billion is deducted from the U.S. economy because of workplace stress, and 550 million workdays are missed per year owing to job stress. 60 to 80% of workplace accidents and an estimated 80% of doctor visits are caused because of stress (Booze, 2014) . 

Relationship to CPT

As a CPT student, I have perceived the great struggle arising out of an inadequate workplace environment at my current workplace. Poor work cultures where there is no enthusiasm or motivation among employees poses a problem to the company. Especially, those who are responsible for creating and delivering projects are directly affected by poor organizational culture, because there is a need for open flow of ideas and a stress-free zone. In my observation, I have noted that such a group of people affected by poor workplace culture are the developers in the IT department. In the absence of a good workplace culture, developers cannot thrive and efficiently create new things. I have worked with a number of developers in various projects and have noticed that one of the primary reasons the workflow is interrupted in my company is because of the work culture. They have been static in the way they manage people, data, rules, policies, technology, and renovation in XYZ for the last 20 years. Firstly, there is a huge communication gap among employees. There is no culture to positively encourage employee bonding. There is more of a hierarchy system in place rather than lateral equal team members. In addition, people are resistant to change. The employees are satisfied staying with old technology that was relevant back in the 90s, even if newer tools have arrived that can cut down significant amount of time and labor and offer better managed systems. This kind of work culture has resulted in low productivity, slow and unsafe systems, while the demand in business is high and fast-pace. Hence, the whole system is bound to break as was the case in the last 2 years. This is when they hired me as an external database management consultant to solve part of the mess.

One of the key reasons, XYZ developers are reluctant to innovation is that they are extremely stressed out, burdened with too much work, more than they can cope with. There seems to be a shortage of developers and the never-ending demand of new projects every day due to new client requirements. To top that of, there are change management rules, no specific guidelines as to how the exponentially growing data is going to be managed over time. There is no time for the developers to relax because of the amount of work pressure. A few developers I know have been working over-time late nights to cover off hour duties and deployments because there was no support up until our DBA team came into the picture.

Data Collection and Analysis

Workplace conditions and organizational culture are significant factors that have an impact on job performance. To validate this theory, I am going to prepare a questionnaire and distribute among 30 developers in XYZ Company. This questionnaire will contain enquires about employees’ satisfaction levels in their current work environment, their motivation levels, and their amount of output per day. These collected data sets will then be reviewed and analysis of each individual’s experiences and comments will be done to arrive at the conclusion. That is, employees’ happiness quotient is directly associated with productivity and innovative thinking.

Literature Review

Traditionally, when happiness at workplace has been discussed, it generally implies employee job satisfaction, and there is a plethora of published studies on job satisfaction already and plenty more are issued annually. A positive lively atmosphere at work influences employees to better function cooperatively and to collaboratively achieve goals as a unit. This paper mainly stresses on the idea of using the happiness quotient as an effective tool to maximize personal betterment, increase overall productivity and induce innovation in organizations.

Job satisfaction and Individual Performance

The psychological climate of a workplace influences important individual-level outcomes such as motivation, commitment, satisfaction and performance (Parker, 2003). As per the Broaden-and-Build model, happier employees are more easily able to “broaden-and-build” themselves, more creative, resilient, socially connected, physically and mentally healthy, and more productive (Fredrickson BL, 2001). The higher the employee’s psychological well-being, the better is their individual performance (Rego Armenio, 2008). According to Wright and Cropanzano, the more positive the psychological well-being of the employee, the stronger [more statistically robust] is the relation between job satisfaction and job performance. Considered together, psychological well-being, job satisfaction and the psychological well-being by job satisfaction interaction (the moderator effect) accounted for approximately 25% of the variance in employee job performance ratings. This finding strongly supports the premise of a distinct competitive advantage for those organizations able and willing to foster a psychologically well workforce and work environment (Wright, 2004).

The equation between Happiness and Innovative Behavior

Innovation is the key to growing continuously and gaining a competitive edge over others in today’s global economy (Petuskiene, 2011). In the twenty first century, there is so much technological advancement and it happens so rapidly almost at a microbial pace, that lagging behind is not an option even for a mid-sized company like XYZ. It has become imperative that organizations strategically deliver cutting-edge products and services, which inadvertently calls for innovative thinking. Google is a prime example of constant innovation, bringing new advances to the global platform of technology. Google, which incorporates organizational behavior best practices, is also well-known for being the number one happy place to work for, based on employee satisfaction surveys. This means those companies that foster creative, stress-free environments are better adept at inspiring individuals to come up with new ideas. Such companies understand the need behind nurturing employee happiness and the benefits of providing an affable platform to their employees.

Problem Statement and Justification

The purpose of this research is to determine those essential elements of happiness that are missing in the current workplace scenario, to understand employee behavior and preferences, and their thoughts regarding these positive changes if they were to be implemented in future, whether it would enhance the employees’ overall motivation to perform better at the workplace and inspire innovative minds.

Happiness is a state of mind. It is usually a subjective feeling and depends from person to person. It can be achieved by both external factors such as a neighborhood with a good friendly environment or by internal factors such as a mother having a baby. Happiness in the workplace can play a vital role in influencing employees’ minds and motivation levels. And this is why substantial research has been done to prove its importance at the everyday workplace scenario. Caring about employees’ happiness quotient can be rewarding not only to the employees but also the employers and the company in the long run.

And yet, one of the most common problems, faced by employees in many small or mid-sized companies is the absence of a happy work culture. Company decision makers may sometimes choose to cut costs from the budget in order to cope with fast-paced business demands and just want to get the work done or sometimes, some small companies fail to recognize the benefits and ignore such needs. But good companies know the value of and invest in their employees’ work environment because it can reap remarkable results. This paper’s research will particularly focus on a group of affected employees called developers at XYZ Company, who need this space and time for creative thinking. They sometimes need to work odd hours and unfavorable conditions can hinder the process of creation and development of innovative software changes at XYZ Company. As per my observation, these groups of people in XYZ work under very high stress and do not have a positive working environment which tends to interfere with or even slow down their productivity rate.

Research Design and Methodology

For this research paper, the primary research method of use would be the Qualitative Methodology. Primarily, personal interviews shall be conducted by distributing questionnaires, and the collected data will then be analyzed. By using this methodology, one can develop a detailed impression of the vivid descriptions provided by the participants which would be intricate, textual and candid in manner. These assessments will assist the researcher to comprehend discrete ideas, thoughts, opinions, emotions and beliefs of each individual. Another benefit of using this research method is that, one can identify those intangible factors which could otherwise be neglected. For instance, expected gender-specific behaviors, implicit social standards and ethnical customs are a few factors that can be perceived through this research process. Qualitative Research Methodology comprises of the following three aspects:

1. Observations

2. In depth Interviews

3. Focus Groups

Through observations, a researcher can elicit and document common patterns of behavior for an individual or a distinct set of people in any specific situation. When the data required for research is very crucial and sensitive in nature, the preferred way of gathering information would be in-depth interviews. And thirdly, focus groups are a good way to understand the general consensus or feeling, where a researcher seeks to draw ideas out of one-to-many interactions and discussions. (Denzin, 2000)

The utilization of open-ended questions in the questionnaire would yield more

personal responses that are based on unique experiences. For this research, questions would

focus on comprehending the workplace culture as perceived by the developers in XYZ

organization, employee satisfaction, job performance and motivation to work and come out

with innovative ideas. Perhaps, there might be some answers which could provide information

about issues that this research might not have anticipated.

A broad selection of investigative queries addressing the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of matters

could be inquired in the questionnaire and one could expect clear and concise responses

(Bernard, 1995).

Proposed Method of Data Collection

More than 90% of the data in this research paper will be drawn from information received through the in-depth interviews. The remaining 10% will be considered supplementary data to support this research that will be taken from already-published research journals, articles, and books.

This supplementary data consists of existing research that has previously studied and validated the subject matter of this paper, that workplace culture impacts employee happiness quotient which in turn affects employee productivity and also innovation.

A rule of thumb that should be followed when it comes to data collection for research purposes is, available supplementary data should be first thoroughly explored and comprehended, before proceeding to obtain from the primary source. Once the supplementary data has been reviewed and improvised to establish the research base, the next crucial step is the process of collecting raw data via interviews, discussions and questionnaires. At this point, one must remember that the result of the in-depth interviews, that is, the data acquired depends largely on the queries prepared for the questionnaire. Hence, in order to abstain from problems such as biased, opinionated or unintended offensive queries, I will be utilizing questions that have been previously formulated by leading experts from the socio-psychological community, and have been tested in large group experiments.

Participants (Population studied)

As stated earlier, I will be handing out the questionnaire to a specific set of people who I feel are largely impacted by the state of workplace culture. This group is none other than the developers in XYZ Marketing Company. Developers are creative people who require sufficient amount of space, time, stress-free zones to do clear and concise thinking, in order to lay out ideas before the software development life cycle moves to the execution and production phase. XYZ Company has a small IT section and there are about 30 developers. As a Database Administrator in XYZ, I have worked with most of them and have already spoken with 10 developers who have agreed to participate in this research project. Three of them have recently moved to XYZ Company in the last 1 - 5 years. One has been in XYZ for 10 years, the rest have been in XYZ for 20 or more years. This assorted mix of experience levels and varied work culture familiarity will help me draw out differences and evaluate responses effectively.

Proposed Method of Data Analysis

In quantitative methodology, after data collection comes the important phase of data analysis. Now that we have raw data, this needs to be converted into statistical representation. Especially if there is numerical data involved, as is the case in quantitative method, there could be various forms of graphs, pie charts, and tabular presentations, plots using the percentages, numbers or ratios obtained via the interview. The reason we convert raw data into quantifiable data is because this data is more usable. For instance, pictorial graphs helps readers who are reading the research better grasp and remember the different aspects of this study. Among the countless Data Analysis tools available today, I will be utilizing a software called DevInfo which is an open-source tool endorsed by United Nations. DevInfo enables users to create databases, store data, analyze data, create reports and share it among desired people across the nation. One of the major advantages of using DevInfo is that it allows you to directly convert your raw data input into the desired visual object (tables, graphs, maps, etc.) easily without having to create databases. It also allows users to save and share this new graphical data through various communication channels including Facebook, Twitter, URL and email. DevInfo doesn’t mandate the download of the software and has a web-based platform. This tool is reliable and relevant to this research as I am familiar with it and have used it previously for data analysis purposes.

Booze, R. (2014). Democracy in the wo orkplace and at Home:. cambrige scholar's .

Denzin, N. &. (2000). Handbook of Qualitative Research. In Handbook of Qualitative Research. (pp. 550-595). London: Sage Publications.

Fredrickson BL, B. C. (2001). Branigan C.Positive emotion.

Parker, C. (2003). Relationships between climate perceptions and work outcomes: A meta-anlytic review. Journal of Organization behavior.

Petuskiene, E. G. (2011). Enterpreneurship as the basic element for successful Employment of Bench marking and business Innovations. engineering Economics.

Rego Armenio, M. P. (2008). Workplace spirituality and organizatioanl commitment.

Wright, A. T. (2004). The Old QuestRole of Psychological well-Being in Job Performance: A fresh Look at an Age-.