I read an inter­est­ing post by Rita Ash­ley, Career Coach, that asks the ques­tion — Do you want your employ­ees to be happy or sat­is­fied? I started to post a com­ment but it was get­ting ridicu­lously long so I decided to move it here and ref­er­ence it there. I am at odds with this por­tion of the post:

Inc. Mag­a­zine posted an arti­cle by the founder of Zap­pos on why he sold to Ama­zon. The arti­cle bears read­ing for many rea­sons, but I was struck espe­cially by its empha­sis on ‘happy.’ I think that is an error in focus.

The whole idea of an employer mak­ing employ­ees happy is pre­sump­tu­ous, in my view. There are too many vari­ables not in the employer’s con­trol. And an individual’s view of their hap­pi­ness quo­tient changes, constantly.

Happy is quite a few notches above sat­is­fied. Sat­is­fied to me is really only accept­able and Zap­pos really shoots for happy. Tony Hsieh’s “social exper­i­ment” is the prac­tice of hir­ing employ­ees who find hap­pi­ness in deliv­er­ing an excep­tional cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.  When it comes to com­pa­nies that build their brand on supe­rior cus­tomer ser­vice –> happy employ­ees are exactly what they need. The busi­ness of cus­tomer ser­vice demands employ­ees who take own­er­ship of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, delight in help­ing oth­ers and derive not sat­is­fac­tion but plea­sure from it. It’s the only way to have staff who doesn’t burn out quickly and get frus­trated lis­ten­ing to com­plaints all day. My expe­ri­ence as the for­mer man­ager of a team of 50 cus­tomer ser­vice reps tak­ing calls for the nation’s largest food man­u­fac­turer is, sat­is­fied doesn’t last as long as happy and it doesn’t per­form as well either.

Employ­ers look­ing for peo­ple who would be happy doing the job can attract them by adver­tis­ing for them, source pas­sive can­di­dates who are a delight to work with and may be open to other oppor­tu­ni­ties, work to have an employer brand that attracts them and walk the talk with inter­nal and exter­nal cus­tomers and clients. The happy staff they have will be nat­ural ambas­sadors and rec­om­mend the place to oth­ers they would like to work with, so a great employee refer­ral pro­gram is important.

Employ­ers can assess if can­di­dates would be a happy addi­tion to their staff by using psy­cho­me­t­ric tools and well designed sit­u­a­tional, behav­ioral and per­for­mance based inter­views and ensur­ing they under­stand each individual’s moti­va­tors to assess if they are a poten­tial fit with what the com­pany offers. They can imple­ment job shad­ow­ing and observe inter­est, allow team mem­bers to meet with them and get their feed­back too. Most impor­tantly, it is essen­tial to be hon­est about cul­ture, per­for­mance and reward when speak­ing with can­di­dates. Promis­ing Utopia and once on-board deliv­er­ing a bar­ren waste land will make even a happy per­son turnover.

Though hav­ing a 100% suc­cess rate at hir­ing employ­ees who will indeed be happy at work is an unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tion, it is some­thing to aim for. Rita is right, “some folks have it, oth­ers don’t.”

I say, try dili­gently to hire those that have it.. You can do it.

In fact, one Ama­zon dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­ter recently began exper­i­ment­ing with its own ver­sion of Zappos’s pol­icy of pay­ing new employ­ees $2,000 to quit if they’re unhappy with their jobs. ~Tony Hsieh

Go Tony =)