If you would like to create a happy workplace or suggest your employers to help create one, this article is for you. All of us want to live in happy workplaces. That would make our lives happier and more productive.

There is one clear way to my mind to have happy employees and that is to hire by mission.

I held a few jobs in my corporate careers but nowhere have I remembered I was asked what the mission of the company was. I think if we are to create a happy world, work life is probably the most important part of it.

If we are to create a happy work life, we need happier employee. Employees form the bulk of the world’s working population.

One clear way to have happy employees is to hire by mission.

Let’s look at how this may be possible.

Google’s mission: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Now given this mission, who is a right fit as an employee for a happy workplace? First of all, someone who believes that Google’s mission makes the world a better place, which it does. Google has made life easier for all of us since its inception and it is a great organization.

For Google, an engaged employee would be someone who works everyday on the mission,

If he is an engineer, he would create systems to enable that to happen, which makes sense for a majority of Google’s employees to be engineers.

If he is a writer, he would write notes and essays to explain the work Google is doing. A marketing person would talk about the mission and its implementation through different media available.

If everyone who works at Google is hired by the mission, they would be able to articulate how their job contributes to the mission. It is highly likely that Google does hire by mission. Perhaps that’s why their attrition rates are lower than the rest of the industry.

It is not only beneficial for the company to hire by mission. It is extremely useful for the prospective candidate if they see a match between the company’s mission and their mission.

If candidates only apply for jobs at companies whose mission they find inspiring, they would find their work lives rewarding. There wouldn’t be a mismatch between what they see as ideal work for them and what they do on a day to day basis.

Google is a tech company and hence people who are trained in tech or interested in tech would be a great for Google.

Let us look at some more examples of company missions.

Forbes’ mission: To deliver information on the people, ideas and technologies changing the world to our community of affluent business decision makers.

Now, what would make employees of Forbes happy at work and what kind of people should Forbes attract? If Forbes were to hire by mission, that would create a happy and fun work environment.

Since the purpose of Forbes is to deliver information to business decision makers, writers on business make a good fit. If there is a history of someone who has already been writing on the world of business, Forbes should be glad to have him/her. That person would only continue to do what they have been already doing.

The audience of Forbes is affluent. The content also need to make sense to the affluent audience base and that would need a calibrated content strategy. So, someone who can think about a content strategy would be a happy employee and a great staff for Forbes.

Are we driving the point yet?

Let us look at another great example.

Tesla: Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.

What can the Tesla management do to make working at Tesla enjoyable? Hire by the mission.

What kind of prospective employees would be happy to work at Tesla? To start with, the man who runs Tesla is one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs of the world. If someone who works at Tesla doesn’t admire Elon Musk or doesn’t want to learn from him, it’s not a great idea. Secondly, what kind of interview questions should a Tesla hiring manager ask?

• Why do you find electric cars exciting?
• How do you think you would contribute to the mission at Tesla?
• What is the future of electric mobility according to you?

Anybody who would be happy to work at Tesla would have to be inspired by the mission of electric mobility. If that mission isn’t exciting to someone, they shouldn’t work at Tesla.

Proctor and Gamble: We will provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world’s consumers.

Now, P&G is a consumer goods company and arguably the best in the business. Now, if they are to make P&G a happy work place, they need to hire people who are excited by consumer goods, the pace of innovation.

They create branded products and services and hence the process of brand creation is important to the company. So, people who are interested in how new consumer brands are created and sustained would find working at P&G a happy and fulfilling experience.

Kickstarter: To help bring creative projects to life.

Now, Kickstarter is a unique company in a way that it doesn’t build its own products and services and rather helps people around the world fund their creative projects.

If they were to make Kickstarter a happy work place, they should hire by their mission-people who would be excited by creative projects. They would want to help people through technology to get those projects come to life. Crowdfunding is still quite new to the world and so an excitement about the idea would help too.

What do we learn from these examples?

With these examples we have seen that hiring people by mission is a one of the most important ways to create happy workplace. Although, as we have previously seen, there could be several things one can do to be happy at work from an employee perspective. However, mission and alignment with the mission is a core fundamental.

If the employees are aligned with the company mission, then everything else that the company does to design a happy workplace would be useful and supplementary. However, if they are not aligned at the mission level, nothing that the management does to improve their happiness levels at work would work, since they don’t identify with the mission of the company which is its reason for existence. Therefore, if you want your workplace to be a happy one, hire by the company mission.

Thank you for reading.

The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani