Michael: Welcome to HaBO Village Podcast. This is Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And this is the podcast that is helping business leaders and small companies create Passion and Provision companies. And that's what we're all about.
Kathryn: That is what we're all about.
Michael: That's the stride, that's the battle, that's the daily pursuit. And sometimes it's a battle, and it's harder than it is, as you know as business leaders, sometimes-
Kathryn: Harder than it is.
Michael: ... it's harder than it is. It's harder than it sounds, it's harder than we want it to be. Sometimes, it's a chore. If you lead a company, you get it, you understand, sometimes you just want to pull your hair out because you're trying to hard to create something of value to yourself and others-
Kathryn: And you're thinking to yourself right now, "Goodness gracious me, what kind of week have they had?"
Michael: Yeah. It's been ... you know what? There's always those challenges in everything else that you have, and we're coming into the studio today and experiencing just some tiredness. At least I am. Are you?
Kathryn: You know what? I am doing better than you are. But we're just going to plow on.
Michael: Yes. Sometimes it just happens because you don't get a great night's sleep the night before. Unless there wasn't as many hours in the sleeping part. You know what? As leaders, you probably understand that, you have those kind of opportunities, days that are great, and days you're just like, "You know what? This is a little harder than I expected it to be." Today we're going to talk about, now that we've got all that out of the way, be a little vulnerable there for you. Today we're going to talk about happy employees. Why is it important to have happy employees in a Passion and Provision company?
Kathryn: And what do we even mean by happy?
Michael: That's a great-
Kathryn: That's such a weird word. We want our employees to be happy. Happy, happy, happy.
Michael: People get upset when we start talking about the word happy at work sometimes. We even encountered people who using words like happy, and hope, with business, actually angers some people. Why do you think that is? I have my own thoughts.
Kathryn: I mean, I think it's because people don't tend to think about work as a place that that's a criteria. Like work is just what you do. It's where you go to earn a paycheck, to work for the weekend, and the happy place is actually Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday, when you don't have to put in hours at work.
Michael: Yeah. I think, I totally agree with that, and Kathryn and I talk about this a lot. I think what also happens at the core of who we are is if I could make my place a happy place to work, why wouldn't I? But I think there's a point at which, for some of us, we have lost the ability to believe, based on our experience and all kinds of stuff, that that's just not what work can be. It's a little too hard, it's a little too cruel, it's a little too-
Kathryn: People are a little too difficult. [crosstalk 00:03:05] struggle.
Michael: You just can't do that. So, why do we talk about this? Because I think these are obstacles to thinking why is happy important? I think that if you just give us a chance today, some of you are going, "Yes, I totally agree." And we're going to help you understand more about what we mean by that, and how you actually think through that. There's actually some really practical things that we can look out. If you're a little bit frustrated right now, and hearing about happy, and you're thinking you're going to turn us off, because this is not the episode for you, stay with us, because I want you to take the opportunity to listen to us and hear why we think that happy employees are important, and what we mean by that. And that there actually is a repeatable method that you can get to for that, and there's good, legitimate reasons on both sides of the equation to strive for that, and try and figure out what that looks like.
Kathryn: If you listen to us because this concept of Passion and Provision within your company resonates with you, then we'll just tell you upfront the reality is that happy employees contribute to both sides of that equation.
Michael: Absolutely.
Kathryn: So we're going to talk a little bit about that as we go forward, but just know that this is not just we want everyone to feel good, this actually has bottom line significant results for how your company functions.
Michael: So let's jump in to talking about what we mean by happy. So what do we mean by happy, Kathryn?
Kathryn: So what do we mean by happy? Well, we're not alone in thinking that happiness matter, there's an entire field of study called positive psychology, that isn't just the power of positive thinking.
Michael: It's not.
Kathryn: So please don't confuse it with that. But, that book was written, I don't know what that date is on this, but The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, A-C-H-O-R, The Happiness Advantage.
Michael: He's written probably three books now on the research on happiness, and he's also got a couple of TED Talks, so if you want to look him up there, he's been around a while.
Kathryn: This particular book was published in 2010, I just actually opened and looked, that's one way to find out.
Michael: This is 2017, when we're recording this.
Kathryn: Yeah. So one of the things that's important is just defining what do we even mean by happiness? We're not just defining it by looking on Google, we're not defining it by the little smiley face emoticons, really, I'm going to read this section in the book. Shawn Achor says this, "How do the scientists define happiness? Essentially, as the experience of positive emotions, pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose. Happiness implies a positive mood in the present, and a positive outlook for the future. Martin Seligman, the pioneer in positive psychology has broken it down into three measurable components. Pleasure, engagement and meaning."
Michael: I like that a lot as a definition. So what are those three again?
Kathryn: Pleasure, engagement and meaning.
Michael: Pleasure, engagement and meaning. What Achor is saying here, first of all, this whole idea of positive psychology in what they're doing, it is a field of study in the academic arena that has been submitted to academic rigor. You just need to know that. It is talking about, and really the bottom line of what positive psychology is is after you assess and look at, it's the whole field of looking at what has made people successful in any realm or area, and looking at the data points that seem to be outliers, but outliers in the higher spectrum. Is there a way to move the average person up, because there's potential there that we've ignored.
Michael: That's what happens in a lot of this field of study, and there's been a lot of great authors that have come out. That whole subject right there, what we're talking about is those three key things. One more time, Kathryn.
Kathryn: Pleasure, engagement and meaning.
Michael: So when you're doing something and you're going, "I have pleasure. I like this. Do you like this? Yeah. Do you have it? No." I'm engaged, I have a measure of pleasure, I have a measure of engagement. I am somehow, I'm interested. You have my interest, you have my attention, it seems relevant, and I'm involved. We all know what engagement looks like in a conversation. Are you engaged in this conversation or not? We all know, as leaders, what it looks like to have an employee, at least generally, this employee, he's engaged or he's not engaged.
Michael: Then, meaning is do I believe that what I'm doing has purpose and meaning beyond myself at a larger scale? At a larger scale, am I contributing to something that's larger for the company, and contributing to something that's maybe even larger in the community? A lot of people will say, business leaders, when you're working with employees, they just need to figure this out themselves. Look, you're the leader, lead. Sometimes, leading is actually giving, a matter of fact, always, leading is giving people a vision.
Michael: Giving your employees a vision, and then reminding them, because people get down into the day-to-day of just getting stuff done, and working for you-
Kathryn: Yeah, and they forget why they're working and what the whole point is, [crosstalk 00:08:11] picture is.
Michael: Totally. And it's easy to lose track of the big picture. It's easy to lose track of the why. Why am I doing this? So when we look at this, when you can give them a sense of at work, they can experience doing their work, a sense of pleasure, a sense of engagement, and a sense of purpose, what you're going to have, the scientists talk about all these other names for it, but Achor what he did is he came in and said, "Basically, what we're saying is, in a general level, for the average person, happy." Are your employees happy? And we're not talking surface happy, you can tell by that definition.
Kathryn: In fact, he kind of goes back to Aristotle, and a word in the Latin that Aristotle used, which I believe is pronounced Eudaimonia, which translates not just to happiness, but to human flourishing. That's part of the definition that really likes. Because again, it isn't about smiley faces and rainbows, and emoticons. It's a translation of happiness as, he'll say it's the joy we feel striving after our potential. So it's when what we're doing is actually drawing our potential out of us. And we're going after it, and it produces all of this positive sense of hope and joy, and all of those things.
Michael: Okay. Stop there. If you're listening to this podcast for the first time, you need to go back and listen to our very first podcast on what Passion and Provision is. For those of you who are caught up with that, let's talk about that a second. When we talk about passion, that's exactly what we're talking about. Passion is not something that's fleeting, just like what we're talking about here is happiness is not just fleeting. We're not talking about something shallow, we're talking about something that it refers to human flourishing, pursuing your potential. Passion is something that comes out of that.
Kathryn: Yeah. Remember, this is one of the things we talked about in a little bit more depth in that first podcast, but part of the reason that we are so passionate about this subject stems back to a book called The Coming Jobs War, that Michael read a bunch of years ago.
Michael: I happen to have it right here in front of me.
Kathryn: And he happens, it's shocking, has it in front of him. Michael, remind us, what is the statistic on disengagement, at least at the point when they wrote this book?
Michael: When they wrote the book, 74% of Americans working are disengaged.
Kathryn: What do we mean by disengaged?
Michael: Gallup defines disengaged as sleep walking at work.
Kathryn: Sleep walking at work. Can you just imagine the impact on your clients, your bottom line, the productivity in your company if your employees are disengaged? If they're just putting in time, working for the weekend, and really not engaging in the process and in what you're trying to achieve and accomplish as a company. I mean, it doesn't take a lot of creativity to think about a scenario in which that would be the case. Just pain, it's just horrible.
Michael: Right. So for those of you who are going, "Look, this is an all nice, and warm, and fuzzy crap. Blah blah blah blah blah. What's the point?" Because I know some of who are listening to this podcast, and that's what you're saying right now, at least you're thinking it, somewhere in the back there's this thought rambling on, "What's the point? Get to the point how it's relevant to money."
Michael: I'm going to reference a book called The Carrot Principle. Carrot Principle was written several years ago, and it was based on a 10-year study of 200,000 managers and employees. It was run by a health organization, I can't remember the name of the organization that ran it, but this was a significant deal. HealthStream Research. The central characteristic truly effective management, the elements that shows up time and again in every workplace. All right.
Michael: So, here's what's happening in this study. 10-year study. They went back and said, "How do you measure engagement? Can you measure it profitably?" There are some great stuff. You want to get this book, like literally, page 15, 16, 17, 18, they start off with saying, "This is huge." For instance, how often do you have to hire people? How often do they leave your company? What's the average retention rate? It is said by multiple organizations that to rehire somebody, hire a new person and get them up to speed, takes usually 1.2 to 1.5, and in some situations 2 times the amount of an [inaudible 00:12:45] salary.
Michael: So there's that much wasted time of efficiency and effectiveness from everything from people who have to train, correct, guide, to the inefficiencies of an employee until they get to the place where they're humming along. It can take that long. It can take that much money. So if you're paying somebody $100,000 a year, and they're humming along and then they quit, to refill that position, not only, it could cost an extra investment of somewhere between $120,000 to $200,000 just to get them back up to speed.
Michael: That's something you don't see on the balance sheet, but it's there. It's a massive cost. It's costing you money in your investment, and then it's costing you productivity. Okay? Here's one of the stats. Just in that alone. According to author Fred Reichheld, a 5% increase in employee loyalty, 5% increase, not a huge one, in company loyalty, which comes from, [inaudible 00:13:47] one of the aspects of engagement and happy employees to the idea that they're going to stay around in your company longer.
Michael: That's not hard to imagine. If I'm happy with my job. Why do people leave their job? They're unhappy. At some level they're unhappy. So if I'm happy, I'm going to stick around. If I just get a 5% increase in employee loyalty in my company. It correlates to a 50% increase in increased profits.
Kathryn: Wow, that's big.
Michael: These are a lot of large companies. Yet, some 75% of US workers are not fully engaged in the job. That's what they're saying in this book, and it was just said a minute ago, it's 74 in another study.
Kathryn: Yeah. There are hundreds, I mean there's been over 200 scientific studies on 275,000, 300,000 people that really correlate this idea of happiness translating to success. And we're not just talking about success at work, we're talking about success in every area of life. So, job is part of it, but health, friendships, marriage, community involvement, all of that. But also job career and business. If people are able to be in a place where they're happy, then there is an incredible positive thing that happens out of that, that will impact your company.
Michael: So you could see, by having this, there's measurements, there's proof, lots of really good rigorous scientific proof that says that people have actually done, and says, "These happy employees, these engaged employees, your company can see a better return on equity, a better return on assets, and a better return on profit based on retention, based on engagement-"
Kathryn: Based on the fact that happy employees take less sick days. They burn out less. There's just a direct correlation, and medicine would tell you that, right. People who are happy, are typically healthy.
Michael: This is huge stuff, folks. Some of you know it, and many of you know it intuitively. Matter of fact, if you're listening to a podcast called Passion and Provision, there's a good chance that you either know this stuff, and you're looking for more answers, you're looking for a community of people that we're going to encourage you more in this thought, because it's not always easy to find people who believe these things, and you're looking for statistics, and numbers, and things that can actually provide the evidence for you in all those contexts.
Michael: Some of you are going, "Well, maybe I'm just checking this out." This is fundamental in our ideal model of running a Passion and Provision company. Now, let's tell a couple of stories. We run a very small shop. There's less than ... if you take our actual number of employees, and you take out part-time employees, and you take our vendors, there's less than 15 of us. Now, you have to understand, when we say vendors, we're talking our really close vendors. And our close vendor is our graphic designer, our videographer-
Kathryn: Web designer.
Michael: ... web design development company and stuff like that. Those people have been with us, I think the one that's been with us the least amount of time is five years. The most is probably 12, 13 years with one of the companies. These are people that are in our secondary tier of our culture. They experience our culture, they like working with us, they find it enjoyable, they find it engaging, and because of that, we find them useful, valuable, engaging, we like working with them, and we all know how to solve problems together. When we have problems, we're able to solve them and get through them.
Michael: There is a pleasure, a satisfaction and an engagement that happens with our vendors and stuff that's really good. The idea of having a vendor who knows your company well, so every dollar you spend is like, "These people understand us. They understand what we're about. They understand how we go about problems." We're not trying to come up with a new way of, "Wow, you like voicemail, and I like text, and I hate voicemail," that kind of stuff isn't happening anymore, right. The inefficiencies kind of bleed away.
Michael: Then the rest of our employees, there's less than of us on average in the office on a regular basis. Those people are at staff meeting Monday morning, and they're at what we call wrap, the last hour of the week on Friday afternoon, which is basically our in-house no work, we're having horderves, wine, beer, hanging out, and just breathing deep and ... hanging out together socially in a sense. But they're on the clock, and we're paying for it, because we're engaging in culture. We're engaging in community.
Michael: We've been doing this for years, and it's part of what we've been able to see as super valuable. But what I'm saying is this, our experience is we're doing this. So we want you to know, this is totally possible. We're engaging in our place where our employees stick around, even our 20-somethings, right, the millennials who everybody says are not working hard, and they're going off, and it's hard to keep them in a job. We're losing one of our staff members who's in her late 20s. Phenomenal gal, just got a great opportunity, and was offered an opportunity to move to a different industry, per se, in a bit larger company. And we're really sad to see her go. She's been with us three and a half years.
Kathryn: Three and a half years.
Michael: She was a college intern before that.
Kathryn: Yeah. She's not leaving because she's unhappy. In fact, it's a fun thing, because there's a place in which we're working hard to do everything that we can, and yet, happy employees still leave.
Michael: Happy employees still leave. It does happen.
Kathryn: It does happen.
Michael: Now, on the average, a lot of folks would say, especially if you're in a larger city environment, you're seeing employees come and go probably every 12 to 14 months. There's a steady stream of folks that are doing that. We're just not seeing it at Half a Bubble Out. We're seeing engagement, they like it, they want to be around. You know, when you're in your 20s, there's other things you want to do also, and experience other things, and not everybody is cut out to be in one company their whole life. That's okay. It's hard to have happy employees, because you have to be vulnerable.
Michael: You know what, folks? I'm just going to call it. One of the reasons a lot of us don't like to do it is we don't like to get hurt. We don't like to get our feeling hurt, and if I get too attached to you, and then you leave, I'm sad, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, I feel betrayed. If I can just, and that's one of the reasons we do this at work, we separate stuff out. I'm going to pick on men, because I think men do it more than women, but I'm seeing more women I think do it too, because we're human, it's like, "It's just easier if I don't get into all that [inaudible 00:21:01] stuff."
Kathryn: Yeah, we're not going to bring our personal life to work at all. We're completely separate, because we don't want that messiness. And sometimes, this has kind of been drilled into us, right, all of your corporate training is that idea that leave your personal life at home, and don't bring it to work. My argument against that always is, "We're whole people. I am going to bring all of who I am to work." The only question is, is work going to be a place it's going to walk with me through stuff or a place that's going to tolerate me while I am being very ineffective because I'm dealing with my life?
Michael: When you're honest with your employees about that, it's like, it works. People feel cared about more. I can see some of you who are wondering right now, because we've had this conversation with folks, you're thinking, "Well, great. Now you're talking about being more engaged, and then you're talking about bringing all these emotions in. And that's going to make them less engaged, because now it's all a big counseling session." Trust me, that's really not what happens.
Michael: Actually, what happens when you have mature people is you have people who share a little bit, they talk when they're having a hard time, they share and then they get back to work. They feel like they've been listened to. It's amazing how powerful it is when somebody just feels like they've been listened to, and heard, and known. We have a deep desire, as human beings, to be known. The only reason somebody says, "I don't." Is usually because they don't want to get hurt. "I've been hurt by being known, I don't want to be known, I don't have a desire for that."
Michael: All these things, why are we talking about all these things? All these things [inaudible 00:22:42] happiness, happy employees. Now, you can choose happy employees for two reasons. One reason is just an existential reason. If you think people should be engaged, and happy in life, and everything else. Another totally other reason is, look, you want to be selfish, you want to just be the numbers? Then you need healthy employees, because literally, you're going to drive your numbers up, you're going to drive all your profit, your return on equity, your return on assets.
Michael: You look at it, it's going to make your company more profitable, and quite frankly, when you call the company's tech service, or customer support, and you talk to somebody who loves their job, and it's obvious, versus somebody who is in a pissy mood, and they don't like their job, they're [inaudible 00:23:34], and they just got chewed out by their boss, and they don't care, which one do you enjoy working more? Which one represents their company better? Which one are you more willing to engage and tell other people about?
Kathryn: Absolutely. There's nothing worse than getting that person on the phone when you are trying to solve a problem who really just doesn't give a flying flip about your problem. They got their own problems.
Michael: All right. Let's talk about, I think at this point, some really practical things that you can do. Because we kind of promised some of that. Why don't you read this? This is great stuff, Kathryn. Kathryn's got some stuff from The Carrot Principle. Why don't you read that, and then we can talk about some stuff that we do in management that we learn from The Coming Jobs War.
Kathryn: Okay. So one of the questions you probably are asking is how do you measure whether your employees are engaged or they are not engaged? So I'm going to read seven questions, or indicators, so there's indicators of employee engagement. So this would be, as a manager, you're looking at your employees, and you would describe it this way. The first one is, "Employees in my department consistently put in an extra effort beyond what is expected." Second, "Employees in my department are highly motivated to contribute to the success of the organization." Which by the way presupposes they understand the goals and values and big picture of the organization, because you've done a good job as a leader of actually articulating those things and repeating them and helping people understand what it is that the company is about.
Michael: We're going to come back to that in a few minutes and talking about what it looks like.
Kathryn: Yeah. Third, "Does employees in my department consistently look for more efficient and effective ways of getting the job done?" That is a great indicator that people are happy.
Michael: I like that.
Kathryn: "Employees in my department," this is four, "Employees in my department have a strong sense of personal accomplishment from their work."
Michael: How many numbers do we have?
Kathryn: Seven.
Michael: Seven. We're on four?
Kathryn: We're on four.
Michael: Okay.
Kathryn: Seven is a perfect number.
Michael: It's for me and everybody listening.
Kathryn: I said seven at the beginning.
Michael: Oh well.
Kathryn: You know. Number five, "Employees in my department understand how their roles help the organization meet its goals." Number six, "Employees in my department always have a positive attitude when performing their duties at work." Number seven, "My manager does a good job of recognizing employee contribution." Those were seven indicators that are the strongest indicators, according to the guy who wrote The Carrot Principle, of employee engagement.
Michael: Those are good things. So I'm asking you listeners, do you want that in your employees? If you want that, I would call that good fruit.
Kathryn: Then he goes on, and this is actually really helpful, to take those same exact things and say, "Okay, if you were to put those from the employees' perspective, instead of the manager's perspective, what would that sound like?" So I'm going to read through those real quick. Again, it's seven.
Kathryn: Number one, "At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?" Two, "My performance is evaluated in a manner that makes me feel positive about working." Three, "Conflicts are managed in a way that results in positive solutions." Four, "My opinion seem to matter to my manager." Five, "My manager shares all the information my co-workers and I need in order to feel part of the team." Six, I receive the information I need to do my job." Seven, "The organization has developed worked/life policies that address my needs." I lied, there's four more.
Kathryn: Eight is, "I trust my immediate manager." Nine is, "During the past year, communication between leadership and employees has improved." 10, "My manager does a good job of recognizing employee contributions." 11, "I've recently received praise for my work." We'll put these in the show notes, so you don't have to go back and write them all down.
Michael: Happy employees. People who are engaged, they feel satisfied, engaged, and like they have meaning and purpose.
Kathryn: Meaning and purpose.
Michael: They are pursuing their potential, they are contributing to a bigger story. These are huge, huge attributes. Huge attributes. I've talked about it before, The Coming Jobs War by Jim Clifton, Chairman of Gallup International. I highly recommend this book. I talk about it often to everybody who listen. Because it actually changed ... I don't know if it changed, but it radically engaged me six years ago when it came out in 2010.
Kathryn: He was so engaged with this book that we were sitting on the steps of a cathedral-
Michael: In Northern England.
Kathryn: ... in Northern England, in York, my hometown. This cathedral is like, I don't know, it's to die for, it's the best. I think it's the best in York.
Michael: It's the best cathedral.
Kathryn: It's the best cathedral, let's just say it.
Michael: We get to vote that.
Kathryn: We got to vote that.
Michael: In a very scientific study.
Kathryn: Yes, in a scientific, completely objective study. He was sitting on the steps of the York Minster reading this book, as though this monolithic, incredible work of art was not just right behind him. So that's when I knew he was completely sucked in.
Michael: I was inspired by the greatness of the Minster.
Kathryn: Yes.
Michael: To think great [crosstalk 00:28:51].
Kathryn: To think great thoughts and lofty thoughts.
Michael: Great thoughts about business. So here's the deal. What I was trying to say is this books is great, and we talk about it in the podcast on management. And we will continue to talk about it, because there's two lists that I use, and I know we're throwing a lot of lists at you today, but if there are some stuff that's practical and helpful out of this, and some nuts and bolts, the stuff out of The Carrot Principle, and the lists that Kathryn has been reading, are indicators or how you can notice and see what managers are thinking about engaged employees, and engaged employees are thinking about their managers and work from their perspective.
Michael: That's really valuable, because sometimes you're trying to figure out how to put that into a perspective. One of the things that I do is I have these two principles, these two lists that I use when we're managing our staff on a regular basis. The first, actually, I originally got from The Carrot Principle in one small chapter, because I realized that public recognition, the whole theme of that book is public recognition, or thoughtful recognition of accomplishments of employees, that was hard to say, provides a really amazing benefit to the finances of your company. But you have to have four solid pieces first.
Michael: You have to have clear goals, clear communication, accountability and trust. We regularly talk about that, we have not achieved a nirvana, and pursuing that or implementing that, but it is a regular part of our process and we are constantly going back to how [inaudible 00:30:30] better at goals, communicating those goals, holding people accountable, what does that look like, and building trust?
Michael: Now, with that said, I also look at this. The five steps of a good job written in The Coming Jobs War. The first one is, you get paid enough so that you're not poor, that's basically the summation of that. The rest of them are, this is a good job, you know what is expected of your work, and you have the inherent capacity to perform new tasks at work. Next one, your boss takes an interest in your success and development. He takes an interest, that's a good job, that means there's a lot of jobs out there that suck, because bosses don't take an interest in your success and your development. Your opinions count at work, and you feel that your job has an important mission and purpose.
Michael: Here are the similarities, in all three of these books, they were written by completely different organizations at different times, but they're all saying the same thing.
Kathryn: Well, and realize that The Coming Jobs War was not just a US study, it was actually global.
Michael: Global study. The first ever global study.
Kathryn: Yeah. So that list is actually true whether you are living in North America, or whether you're living in Zimbabwe, or other third-world countries. The reality is that when people describe what it would be to have a good job, that's the list it boils down to.
Michael: So the topic today has been the importance of happiness of employees in a Passion and Provision company. You can't have Passion and Provision without this concept of happiness, passion, all these different synonyms, but what we're saying is, you can't have this type of a company. You can't have this flourishing company. Financially, you can't have a flourishing company, or relationally and intrinsically you can't have a flourishing company for you as a leader, for your employees, even having raving fan customers, really you need raving fan employees.
Kathryn: Yeah. They're the ones that create raving fan customers as it turns out.
Michael: They really do, they really do. So you have to have. This premise of today is, we talk about this, this is part of our concept and our base philosophy, and we see it in the research. The research just screams it over and over again. The companies that have really done well, great, great companies to work for, that are financially successful, and thriving, and growing, and healthy, they have these aspects. They think about it. Now, here's what happens. There are companies out there that are full of people who don't care how happy anybody is, the leaders are cranky, the employees are cranky, people come and go, and these are still extremely large wealthy, wealthy companies.
Michael: Make lots of money, they are on the stock exchange, they're maybe even in the Fortune 500, they may even be in the Fortune 100. But here's a couple things I want you to think about. First of all, what we've already shown you is just a glimpse of the research, there's a lot of potential those companies have-
Kathryn: That they're missing.
Michael: ... that they're missing completely. Totally missing. There is a whole aspect that they're missing financially, and leaving money on the table. They're wasting money with employee turnover, they're wasting money with engagement issues, because 74% or more of their employees are disengaged, which means they're not even close to putting out their potential. They're not even close to putting out what they're thinking-
Kathryn: They know it, because many of them are hiring consultants to come in and help figure out how to create the culture that they're not creating.
Michael: They do. Some of them are. They're trying to do it without fixing the whole thing. Like how do I put a band-aid on it? So these things are going on, but if you want a Passion and Provision company, where you as a leader are seeing your company grow, and you're growing your satisfaction and enjoyment at what you're doing, your passion is growing also, then fulfillment. Whether your passion is the actual product or service your company delivers, or it's just building companies, or it's just offering jobs.
Michael: We have one friend, who grew a company, sold it for a lot of money, millions of dollars. And he doesn't need to work again. And he's back, started another company, you know the number one reason he gave me? "I like to employ people."
Kathryn: What a gift. It's an interesting realization as an employer when payday stops being a scary thing and starts being something you get to celebrate. And for me, I've had to make conscious decisions at times when things felt scary to still celebrate payday. But I actually get to help people live their lives and be employed, it's super fun.
Michael: So it probably feels like I went in for a landing, and then I'd pulled up and took [crosstalk 00:35:22].
Kathryn: Still circling. Still circling.
Michael: No, no, no, no. Pull up, pull up. No, let's land this thing. The whole idea, importance of happy employees, hopefully we've demonstrated at least at a high level today, incites you to think more about it, engage more, learn more, how do I do this more. If you have questions, please leave them on our show notes page, we want and invite any comments. We really would love that. Then, I think what we're going to need to do, Kathryn, is set up an email that we can talk about, so people can shoot in an email into the company, so they don't always have to go to the show notes page, because I know sometimes that's hard.
Michael: To be able to ask questions, because we would love to be able to interact more with our listeners. We would love it if you would go over to iTunes and hit subscribe. That helps us to reach more people, and helps us to know that you're listening. It also helps the more people we have hitting subscribe, the more opportunities we have to reach more people with this message.
Michael: So, I hope this was helpful today. This is super important to us. We go out of our way, we have a huge appreciation for it, and a high rating in our company of people who just, they're super happy with it. And even when they leave, we talk to the employees, a lot of our employees have been gone, some of them for 10 years, and we still see them, hug them, and we still talk and communicate, and go back and forth, because our network builds and grows as we send people out. It's not cut off. Because we care about relationship, you don't get cut off when you leave Half a Bubble Out.
Kathryn: Yeah, I heard someone say recently, people are going to come and go, they're going to be hired, they're going to move on. And the only question really is when they leave, do you still have their heart?
Michael: This goes down to way more than just having a profitable business. It goes down to having a profitable life. We believe the profitable lives can make profitable companies. So, for myself.
Kathryn: And for me.
Michael: That's to [inaudible 00:37:25]. Have a great week, thank you for listening, and again, we'll talk to you next week. Bye bye.
Kathryn: Bye bye.
