Creating a sense of purpose to increase productivity and profitability
An analysis of different business leaders’ experiences advocates that achieving higher productivity and profitability is directly related to their approach to business culture and creating a sense of purpose for their workforces.
Business owners’ approach to (doing) business and the culture which they build and foster within their organisations combines to deliver a sense of purpose and are crucial factors in the profitability of their businesses.
A growth mindset
The experience of working in toxic experience environments is often a precursor to what makes managers and business owners passionate about creating a supportive and enabling workplace environment where people feel valued and included.
The aim is to make sure employees feel that their work, skills, and individual contribution is valued and forms part of a bigger collective where they are supported and to give of their best. A collaborative management style that fosters personal growth through collective/departmental achievement of goals, in the context of healthy competition, teamwork and accomplishment, is one that sets businesses and individuals up for success. Working together to make common and individual goals a reality creates an environment of mutual positive change.
Pay it forward
This forward momentum creates an atmosphere of progress and belonging to something bigger. By embedding “paying it forward” in how they operate internally, businesses can make a much broader contribution to the community and to society by providing the ideal workspace that “gives back”. Tying charity work or social responsibility initiatives to business objectives (e.g: one food parcel for every new incoming lead), has a huge compounding effect on staff sense of purpose, inclusivity and ultimately overall business profitability. This is (quite literally) a virtuous productivity cycle.
A second contributory factor to business success is the ‘management’ of employees’ energy levels (as opposed to time management). The underlying reasoning is that by investing in employees’ overall mental and physical wellbeing, companies get a massive return by ensuring peak performance and thus productivity.
A few creative examples include initiatives such as:
- Exercise areas in the workplace that are contractually stipulated to be used for a minimum of one working hour per day.
- Team building activities could be exclusively devoted to exercises on mental and physical wellbeing.
- Maintaining healthy employee blood sugar levels by providing healthy soft-drink alternatives and limiting caffeine at certain times of the day.
Reimagining the workplace
The conclusion many innovative and forward-thinking business owners have come to is that in today’s workplace business success must be REIMAGINED. Meaning and purpose are crucial to business success. Modern, effective management and leadership advice is to know and harness employees’ talents and skills to achieve the best business outcomes.
As current best practice would have it, to achieve greater yield on investment, creating a culture of individual and team engagement that brings satisfaction at every organisational level results in top productivity and performance. In other words, the happier the people, the happier the business!
