Has anyone seen any data to back this up? This seems like the sort of assertion that would be quantifiable - Every company seems to have its own internal satisfaction surveys; and external sources have been doing employee happiness surveys for years.
In my opinion, if you're making employees fill out surveys about their happiness, you're doing it wrong. What's needed is a culture where employees don't just follow policy but help shape it as well. Contributions met with positive feedback beget more contribution, and everyone feels as though they have a say in how things are done.
Of course, not every idea is good. Instead of ignoring or dismissing the idea, explain its flaws and ask them to present a revised idea that addresses those points.
I didn't do a good job making my point. I'm not interested in having my employees fill out surveys at all. I'm curious as to whether or not someone has actually done any studies with regards to the claim that happy employees equates to successful companies.
If a correlation can be made, then it validates the foosball tables and Wii that seem to be ubiquitous in startups these days.
Otherwise, it seems like the article is saying "these two guys have successful companies because their employees are happy"; versus the conventional wisdom that successful companies tend to have happier employees than unsuccessful ones. In other words, correlation does not equal causality.
Zappos. They focus on making both employees and customers extremely happy, at all costs.
Apple. They focus on making a majority of their customers happy. They don't seem to do anything remarkable for their employees, however.
Microsoft. They don't understand how to make their customers happy, nor do they know how to make their employees happy.
All three of these companies are successful. There's a continuum of success, and how far you get down that continuum depends on many variables. In the end, it's a matter of business philosophy and focusing on what the business does best.
When business people say that corporations exist to maximize shareholder value, I always cringe. Businesses exist to make something people want, and then to receive money in exchange for making or doing it. The point of a corporation is to make the most awesome "something," such that lots of people pay you for it. Simple.
To make the most awesome "something," you have to focus on what that something is. Whole Foods is a retailer, so their employees interact directly with their customers. In Whole Foods case, the "something" they provide is a point of distribution of goods. Making their employees happy will have a direct, positive impact on the quality of the customer experience in the store. But this is not really quantifiable because you can't have a before/after controlled study. The happiness that Whole Foods tries to instill in its employees permeates the culture of the company; it's how they do business. They can't simply turn off their company happiness meter and see if profits drop.
You can, however, compare Whole Foods to the other health food stores that don't focus on employee happiness... and the results are obvious.
