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Why Practicing Altruism Will Make You (and Everyone You Know) Happier

Courtney Shipshock May 11, 2015

altruism

We recently published a piece explaining how happiness promotes productivity and highlighted several cost-effective perks for employers to boost employee happiness. Similarly, employers can also harness empathy and altruism to increase happiness in the workplace.

What are Empathy and Altruism?

Simply put, empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the feelings of another person. Altruism is the selfless concern for the well-being of others. While two distinct social phenomena, empathy and altruism relate when put into the context of the 21st-century workplace. Both behaviors fall under the idea of “positive affect” and “companionate love”.  Researchers employ these traits when investigating the implications of positive emotions in the office.

Empathy and Altruism in the Workplace

Empathy and altruism in the workplace foster greater levels of office camaraderie and encourage employees to make more selfless choices. A study at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that altruists are more likely to be committed to their work and less likely to quit their jobs. Examining the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which surveys 10,000 Wisconsin high school graduates from the class of 1957, researchers demonstrated that those who routinely help others are happier than those who do not.

altruism collaboration

A recent Catalyst study led by Jeanine Prime and Elizabeth Salib found a positive association between selfless acts by managers and increased innovation by employees. Furthermore, employees who observe altruistic behavior in their leaders are more likely to feel included in their work teams and engage in team citizenship behavior, such as picking up slack for an absent colleague. These findings resonate with previous research confirming that observed altruism results in individual status gains among groups. This provides a greater potential for elevated status as the personal cost of an altruistic act increases.

The Business of Empathy and Altruism

Another study similarly asked employees to rate their CEOs in terms of four traits: Integrity, Compassion, Forgiveness, and Responsibility. Executive development firm, KRW International, reports that CEOs earning high character marks had an average return on assets of 9.35%. This is nearly five times the 1.93% of their low ranking counterparts. While dramatic, this margin is not all that surprising. Stanford University research psychologist Emma Seppala cites neuroimaging research. The study confirmed how our brains respond better to bosses who have shown us empathy. And, as a result, this established a link between workplace trust and performance.

Business writer Jayson Boyers aptly notes that “relationship-focused success expands capacity and potential, and empathy is a business skill that actually grows when practiced and shared.”. Empathy and altruism are skills we develop, rather than static personality traits. This notion is key for businesses hoping to incorporate a positive emotional outlook into workplace culture.

altruism social networks

Empathy and Altruism in Practice

While in practice it may seem overwhelming, the research of James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis is encouraging. Fowler and Christakis studied 5,000 people over 20 years and discovered people surrounded by happier people tended to be happier in the future. According to Fowler, “We found a statistical relationship not just between your happiness and your friends’ happiness, but between your happiness and your friends’ friends’ friends’ happiness.” In lay terms, practicing altruism and empathy is statistically more likely to produce an outward ripple through your social network that will find its way back to you via the growing compassion of your peers.

In the coming weeks, we encourage you to be attentive to opportunities to practice your compassion. Turn an earnest mistake into a teachable moment or a disagreement over strategy as a chance to broaden your perspective. If you notice an overwhelmed colleague this week, consider offering to pick up their lunch. Altruism and empathy are one of the most effective means of improving emotional culture. Plus, they also produce tangible benefits in the workplace. The best part: the only limit to how much you get is how much you give.

Evidence that Exercise Can Make Your More Productive

Courtney Shipshock March 11, 2015

Emerging research suggests that exercise is just as important for your mind as it is for your body. Numerous studies find that different types of exercise affect the brain in an equally varied number of ways. Both promote cognitive function and preserving brain health.  Let’s discuss the science behind this research and dive into a few examples that have positive implications for productivity.

exercise can make you more productive

What Science Says…

Studies show exercise can increase the presence of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) in the brain. BDNF is a critical protein for the brain’s ability to heal, adapt, learn, and form memories. Until a study led by cell biologist Bruce Spiegelman, researchers remained uncertain about how exercise actually induces elevated levels of BDNF. Spiegelman and his team discovered that irisin, a hormone secreted by muscle cells after endurance exercise, is essentially a “chemical messenger” that promotes expression of BDNF, as well as genes linked to learning skills and memory formation. The discovery of irisin has enabled the scientific community to research the effect of exercise on cognitive function with more precision than ever.

A Georgia Institute of Technology study found that intense resistance training for periods as short as 20 minutes can boost episodic memory (memory of specific past events) by 10%. A study by David Jacobs linked aerobic fitness during one’s 20’s and increased memory performance later on in life. Two studies by the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois (one on children and one on adults age 60+) measured increased white matter integrity in those with higher levels of aerobic fitness. White matter has been deemed a “superhighway” connecting the brain’s regions; more compact white matter is associated with increased attention and faster cognitive function.

Exercise for Your Mind

While we still have years worth of research before we fully understand how exercise impacts the brain, it is clear that many forms of voluntary physical activity enhance mental performance and protect against neurological disease. The latter is certainly an important trend for the 21st-century American worker. We see this as the average retirement age has slowly but steadily increased for the last two decades.

On a related note, exercising for 150 minutes per week improves sleep quality up to 65%. This is especially significant when considering that poor sleep quality may lead to long-term loss of grey matter. This important substance makes up brain regions responsible for muscle control, sensory perception, memory, and decision making. Furthermore, scientists attribute the lack of proper sleep with mental fatigue in the workplace than one’s actual workload. By boosting cognitive function and reducing mental fatigue, exercise can effectively lighten your workload without actually reducing your output!

We here at PerkSpot know that starting a new exercise routine can be a challenge. That’s why we offer PerkSpot Health and Wellness. Your employees save big on local gym memberships and nutrition programs, and your business benefits from healthier, happier workers!

How to Invest in Happiness Without Blowing Your Budget

Courtney Shipshock February 23, 2015

invest in happiness

It is a corporate truism that happiness begets productivity. There is a slew of data to support this idea, such as the extensive work of Teresa Amabile or this Gallup poll by James Harter. More recently, perks have emerged as the choice tactic for companies seeking to boost employee happiness. So much so that companies, from entrepreneurial startups to established enterprises, hire perk managers to engineer creative perk programs.

We here at PerkSpot know that not all perks are created equal.

We are also aware that not every business can afford a $10,000 per employee desk allowance or a month-long office adventure to Thailand. We’ve dug deeper into the wealth of research on the happiness-productivity model and hope that our findings will suggest some cost-effective ways to invest in workplace happiness that will ensure your highest ROI. A number of recent studies point out that broader psychological factors have the strongest implications for increased workplace productivity. Professor John Zelenski demonstrated that “positive affect” is more strongly tied to high productivity than either “job satisfaction” or “quality of work life.”. In another study, Thomas Wright found that increased job satisfaction yields increased productivity only when employees already have a high level of psychological well-being (PWB). Employees who score low on “life satisfaction” stay home an average of 15 more days a year, states Gallup Healthways. Another Gallup study showed that retail stores scoring high on employee life satisfaction generated $32 million more in earnings than less happy competitors. The data suggests managers should focus on perks that promote more general psychological factors like life satisfaction and psychological well-being. An office ping-pong table may seem sure to increase employee happiness. However, MetLife’s Benefits Trends Study suggests that offering a financial education program may be more effective. According to the study, 54% of employees worry about their financial security; while 51% of employers strongly agree employees are less productive when they worry about personal financial problems. 57% of employers agree that offering financial education to employees has a positive impact on productivity.

Don’t underestimate the benefit of perks that cost you nothing.

A recent study by Nicholas Bloom and John Roberts focused on China’s largest travel agency. They found employees permitted to work from home were 13% more productive and 50% less likely to leave their jobs. Considering the cost of replacing an employee can range from 90% to 200% of their annual salary, this is significant. In fact, FastCo.Design says you may see similar upticks in productivity from changing your office environment. They suggest converting a portion of your office into spaces akin to employees’ homes (think sofas, café tables, etc.). Increased time with family and friends can strongly reinforce the high levels of psychological well-being that promote job satisfaction. It’s no surprise, then, that the Society of Human Resource Management reports that 30% of employers offer discounted tickets to movies, theme parks, museums, and more in order to encourage more family outings. We hope that our research sheds some light on the burgeoning world of workplace perks. Perks geared toward enhancing employees’ lives outside the office can result in the largest jump in job satisfaction and productivity. The above examples suggest some cost-effective starting points for anybody looking to build a perks program into their office culture. Want more insights like these? Subscribe using the form to the right!
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