I’m a big baseball fan, and my favorite team is the St. Louis Cardinals. Hopefully, by the time you read this, they will still be playing and on their way to the World Series. But if not, it was a terrific season filled with memories. Part of the fun centered around the probable final seasons for three great Cardinals, Adam Wainright, Yadier Molina, and Albert Pujols.

I have followed Albert Pujols since he first joined the Cards in 2001 when he was a unanimous choice for the Rookie of the Year Award. Despite having plenty of other things to pray for, I’m pretty sure I sent up a few that the Cards would figure out how to resign him in 2011. Alas, they didn’t, and he headed to the Los Angeles Angels where he played until 2021. Much to the chagrin of Angels fans, he was never quite the player he was in St. Louis. In 2021, after being unceremoniously fired by the Angels, he finished the year with the Dodgers. Instantly, there were glimmers of his former greatness and he helped the Dodgers in a pretty good season which ended with a loss to the Braves in the league Championship Series.

Pujols showed that he still had a little baseball life in him with the Dodgers and the Cards signed him to a one-year contract for the 2022 season.  Albert batted .270 after a low of .198 in his last year with the Angels. He hit 24 home runs, making his lifetime total 703 as I write this, fourth on the all-time home run list just behind Babe Ruth. Pujols has been instrumental in getting the Cards to the playoffs at the ripe old age of 42.  Why the big change? I think it’s because he’s happy playing with his old friends Yadi and Wainright, happy he can meaningfully contribute to the team, and happy to be winning.

Here’s where the baseball story intersects with business. In my conversations with business owners, I’ve started to notice a trend. Many of them, especially in the last twelve months, have shared that they have noticed their employees being less than nice to customers and to each other. Owners describe these instances as if the employees are annoyed by customers or fellow employees to the extent that they want to end the interaction and just get back to their “to-do” lists.

Employee engagement is at an all-time low with Gartner reporting that only 21% of all employees worldwide classify themselves as engaged in their work.  Unengaged employees create all kinds of problems for a business but owners often misread the signs. According to PerkBox, a global benefits, and rewards company, here’s what happens when employees aren’t engaged in their work:

·      Productivity and the quality of work decline

·      Employees withdraw from the team

·      Employees take more frequent breaks and more time off

·      Employees have no appetite for challenge or responsibility

·      Employees are less likely to show up on time and they often head for the door earlier

·      Employees call in sick more often

·      Employees exhibit negative attitudes

·      Timely response to requests and deadlines declines

·      Learning and improving are no longer a focus

Some owners mistakenly think that a vacation or raise can impact an engagement problem. Time off and raises can help in the short term, but they don’t fix the problem in the long run.

Once workers become disengaged, it permeates the culture of the company and can take years to rectify. Unfortunately, if owners fail to recognize how deeply rooted their engagement issues are, it can lead to low profitability and closure.

When I hear stories that indicate an engagement problem, the owner is often burying his/her head in the sand. They think the symptoms of disengagement will abate as business picks up or as open positions are filled.  More work pushed into a business that isn’t working productively makes the problem worse. New employees brought into a workforce struggling with engagement will either become disengaged themselves or leave quickly.

Happy employees aren’t necessarily engaged employees but engaged employees are likely to be happy. Research conducted by British Telecom firm BT, found that workers are 13% more productive when happy. More research from Harvard Business Review found that organizations with happy and engaged employees are 22% more productive than organizations with lower employee engagement and satisfaction rates.

Just like negativity, happiness is contagious. I was recently in a candy store in Louisville, Kentucky, and ran across a clerk who was practically holding court. He was so excited about the product, that he happily shared his thoughts on the ingredients, the production process, and the owner’s philosophy. People were drawn into the store from the street because of his enthusiasm. He happened to be training a new person who was on the other side of the store engaging with customers in much the same way as the training employee was.  His happiness was contagious and that store was definitely selling more candy than had the clerks been scrolling through their cell phones or chatting with each other.

For business owners, I think it’s important to think about your teams in this new light. One of my clients recently shared how one department within his business just seems to be “on it”. He sees them as always pushing themselves to learn new things and work smarter and faster.  As I probed, he began to conclude that the success in the one department had evolved over time and was linked to one employee who joined a few years back who was happy. He thinks the other employees gravitated to her and away from the leader of the department who tended to be negative.  Within the year, the negative leader moved but the team didn’t suffer from the disruption, they flourished. My client felt, after thinking about it, that the team had been a catalyst for the whole organization to become happier and more engaged. This department decorates the office for holidays, runs contests frequently to get other departments involved in the fun, and seemed to have spearheaded an employee culture renaissance. This company has grown by over 25% annually since 2020.

A core group of employees can change everything and even one employee can be the catalyst. As we head toward 2023, it’s a good time to take stock of your employees. Who are the happiest and the catalysts that make others better? Also consider employees who may once have been engaged and productive but have slowly declined in productivity. Is it because they have lost a spark that used to make them happy? Can you surround them with people who could once again bring out the best in them?

Lastly, consider your happiness. Has the disruption since the pandemic started in 2020 caused you to lose a spark? Are you finding it more difficult to take on the serious challenges in your business and easier to just keep on doing the same old things? Are you engaged in developing your own business and its culture or are you just focused on getting to the end of another day?

If you are happy, you will attract happy people and that will lead to engagement and productivity. Are you Albert Pujols who just needed to be happy again to be productive? Focus on the things that make you happy and carry those things in your heart when you go to work every day.

If you are looking for a spark to reignite your love of business ownership, sales management or sales, executive or sales coaching or the Evolve Peer Group could be the answer. Use the contact form below to let me know and we’ll schedule a phone call.