Facts & Figures: What Happy Companies Know
The Gains Created by Happiness
A survey of 3,000 companies showed that an investment of 10 percent of revenue on capital improvements yielded a 3.9 percent rise in productivity, while the same investment in people yielded an 8.5 percent increase in productivity.
—University of Pennsylvania
Companies with the best people practices provided a 64 percent total return to shareholders over a five-year period, more than three times the 21 percent return for companies with the weakest practices, based on a survey of 750 companies worldwide.
—Watson Wyatt research firm
Professional services firms with great people practices demonstrated financial results far above the average. The five highest scoring offices had results of: 52 percent above average; 47 percent above average; 73 percent above average; 169 percent above average; and 300 percent above average.
—Statistical analysis by David Maister, author of Practice What You Preach
Activities directly related to emotionally intelligent employees have a far more profound impact on stock price than quantitative results.
—Statistical analysis by Kevin Gregson, Sherwood Solutions
Companies with strong organizational virtues such as trust, integrity, optimism and compassion had a higher level of profits than organizations that are not perceived to have those virtues.
—Study by the University of Michigan Business School
Boards of directors providing the greatest oversight of management averaged 51.7 percent in shareholder returns, against an average of 12.9 percent returns for companies whose boards provided weak oversight.
—1999 BusinessWeek study
The top ten companies based on the quality of management governance and board oversight showed returns of 6.5 percent and 7.9 percent for three-year and five-year returns, compared to bottom ten returns of negative 0.2 percent and negative 4.0 percent for three and five years, respectively.
—Institutional Shareholder Services 2003 study
SAS Institute, the largest private software company in the world, has a turnover rate of less than five percent, compared to a 20 percent industry average, with savings of at least $85 million annually.
—What Happy Companies Know
Companies with a clearly articulated reward strategy have 13 percent lower turnover than other companies. Practices such as a lack of hierarchy, employee input into company processes and decisions, and high trust in management deliver a 9.0 to 21.5 percent increase in shareholder values.
—Watson Wyatt research firm
Managing people in ways that build high commitment creates returns of 30 to 50 percent.
—Jeffrey Pfeffer, Stanford University
The Losses Caused by Unhappiness
Studies in Japan, Finland, France, and the United States reveal alarming stress-related statistics: High levels of mental stress double the risk for stroke-related and heart-related deaths; stressed people have a 72 percent greater risk of strokes; people with stressful jobs were 71 percent more likely to have plaque buildup in their arteries; sustained anxiety increased thickness of blood vessels, a prelude to heart disease.
—What Happy Companies Know
Work-related stress is one of the principal causes of death from heart and lung disease, alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver, cancer, accidents, and suicides.
—National Institutes of Health
Violence in the workplace is the second-leading cause of work-related death at more than a thousand deaths a year.
—National Institutes of Health
Forty percent of workers report that their job is very or extremely stressful and that 25 percent of employees view their jobs as the top stressor in their lives.
—Northwestern National Life survey
Stress is responsible for 19 percent of absenteeism, 40 percent of turnover, 30 percent of disability costs, and 60 percent of workplace accidents.
—Chrysalis, a Canadian consulting firm
Problems at work are more strongly associated with health complaints than any other factor in people’s lives, even financial or family problems.
—St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance
Health and Personal Responsibility
Obesity, smoking, a lack of exercise, poor nutrition, an inability to manage stress, and similar lifestyle issues are associated with 50 to 70 percent of all illness and medical problems.
—William Whitmer, CEO of Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO)
Between 70 to 80 percent of the aging process involves factors under the individual’s control.
—Dr. Mehmet Oz, co-author of YOU: The User Guide and one of the surgeons who repaired President Clinton’s heart
The Biology of Thought and Emotion
The heart is not merely a mechanical pump. The heart is partly an organ of intelligence that responds to emotional stimulus, often before the brain. Emotions result from the interaction of the heart and brain, with the heart providing primary input and the brain sorting out patterns and relationships from all the inputs it receives, including those from the heart.
—What Happy Companies Know
Short- and long-term memory, auditory discrimination, and spatial working memory are all examples of cognitive functions that have been demonstrated scientifically to improve when people achieve greater coherence in their heart rhythms.
—The HeartMath Institute
Couples who talk about the positive aspects of their relationships reduce stress by 15 percent, while those who talk about the negatives increase their stress 48 percent.
—Journal of Family Psychology
Contentment and joy speed recovery from the cardiovascular aftereffects of negative emotions.
—Psychologist Barbara L. Frederickson, a Macarthur Award winner at the University of Michigan
Appreciation-generating techniques reduce cortisol production, reduce blood pressure, reduce the amount of medication required by patients suffering from many physical ailments, improve hormonal balance, and increase the body’s production of antibodies against pathogens.
—What Happy Companies Know
A study of 800 heart patients found that those who reported positive emotions and joy were 20 percent more likely to be alive after 11 years than those who reported negative emotions.