I remember a Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Kramer pretended to be a traditional couple “How was your day, dear?”
Yes, they mocked this but how important are the People experiences to your day at work?
If you had a “bad day” it is often because of the people experiences you had—you had to assuage a difficult customer, a subordinate made a poor decision or behaved badly, a team member did not complete his part of the project and you had to do more work, your supervisor or co-worker was grumpy or critical, or you had to deal with petty politics.
Your day to day experiences with customers, managers and your team and the climate and culture of the office can be motivational or sapping to your energy.
Our firm’s founder Dr Jerry Newman found that social interaction was a key indicator in job satisfaction and retaining good workers in his book My Secret Life on the McJob. In fact, he found that many teenagers stayed at their fast food job even after college graduation partly based on the great camaraderie they felt at work.
A recent Gallup poll found that if someone had a “best friend at work” they reported more positive perceptions of their job, including much higher ratings of recognition, development, co-worker reliability, job importance, and achievement factors.
McDonald’s is leveraging the importance of what they call “Friends & Family” to attract employees.
According to a recent article by our firm’s founder Dr. Jerry Newman and McDonald’s Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Richard Floersch, McDonald’s actually has very high employee perceptions of their people experiences in their job.
Reward/ Percent Who Love This About McDonald’s:
- Culture 82%
- Teamwork 80%
- People I work with 78%
Image courtesy of samuiblue at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
