Zappos

An online retail corporation called, zappos.com, caught my eye recently. Tony Hsieh, current CEO of Zappos, believes that corporations should promote employee happiness, which in turn would create a positive company culture. That company culture would create a comfortable work environment for employees ultimately making production more efficient, and creating employees that are willing to happily provide their services to the company.

One of the business strategies that Hsieh uses for Zappos is delivering wow through service. In other words, providing a “wow” service to customers by going beyond their expectations. Sound familiar? However, he says that in order to make this portion of his business strategy successful, his employees MUST be happy at the workplace. Happiness in the employee drives business because in the end, if your employees are happy at their job, that means they’re willing to work for you. Everything falls into place because instead of having to micromanage every single employee, the employees will want to work as a team and ultimately watch over each other in order to help the company grow.

For a worker to be happy, Hsieh says that there needs to be a pursuit of progress in the job. In other words, people want to know that they’re actually getting somewhere with the job they’re doing. People like some form of control over the job they’re doing, and they want to feel as if they are a part of something significant. If a worker feels dispensable at a company, why would they work hard and help the company profit if they feel as if the company will eventually cast them aside?

Hsieh has other notable business strategies such as embracing drive and change. After all, a company must change in order to grow. However, he always comes back to the fact that the employees have to be happy. The happiness of the workforce would automatically create a strong work culture that would subsequently contribute in the growth of the business.