The World's Greatest Workplace

Do you wake up in the morning with a big smile on your face? Is it because it is another day at your job? I guess not. However we all hope that someday we'll work in such a place.

This TED talk is about an amazing Malaysian company that its goal is to become "The World' Greatest Workplace".

The founder of the Mindvalley company describes why his employees jump out of their bed every morning so they can go to work.

 There are FIVE principles that the company does in order to become the "World's greatest workplace":

1.       Happiness – they built an advanced and a beautiful workspace for the employees while giving them the freedom to use it (reading a book on a hammock). They allow their employees to decide when to come to work; it doesn’t matter if you work at night or on a holiday as long as the work gets done. They also arrange parties and festivals for the company and try their best in turning their employees into friends acknowledging that friends work better than random people.

They have turned their weekly company meeting into "weekly awesomeness report" which looks more like the "Daily Show" than a company meeting.

2.       A Noble Mission - The Company has a grand mission to touch 500 million lives using their company's products and knowledge. All the employees share this goal.

3.       Quests – They use a lot of gamification principles in order to make their work day as a game.

a.       Badges for achievements as desktop icons that everybody can see like "The Flash Badge" for the employee who finished his tasks the fastest and etc.

b.      Every team submits their high score in the end of the week and they try to improve it on the next one.

c.       They have an inside website where all the employees can vote for other employees and tell them how great they are, they also can send an icon or a badge to another employee in order to thank them for something – imagine coming to work and getting a note telling you how awesome you are.

d.      "S.P.L.A.S.H" – an inside group of employees that nobody in the company knows who is a member of it. They have a secret budget to do funny things every two weeks like a "Starbucks day" when every employee gets a cup of coffee when he gets onto the office or a mustache day when all the men gets a fake mustache and they have to wear it for the entire day. The little things are what make the people happy.

4.       Personal Growth - 45/5 rule: Every employee works no longer than 45 hours a week while 5 hours from it are dedicated for personal growth. The company wants the people to invest in themselves and become greater. Another special thing is that every employee shares his top life goals that he wishes to achieve. The managers and the other employees try to help each other in achieving them. You can truly know your employees by helping them achieve their lifetime goals – that what makes a true connection.

5.       Tribal Dynamics - Become a tribe. Just watch it. It's awesome.

If you are a founder or a manager of company make the employee's happiness as your goal.  Don’t focus mainly on your revenue or the productivity of the company, is not the main issue, when you make people excited so hard that they want to jump out of the bed every morning to go to work then the people will find creative ways to improve productivity, get the work done and increase the revenue.

By the way if you are a team leader and your company is not the world's greatest workplace yet then you should imply those topics on your team where the team members happiness  is your responsibility (a festival in Paradise Islands is not needed, a nice day outside the office will do).  Maybe it won't make your company the "world's greatest workplace" but it will make your team the "world's greatest team".

"Work, play – makes no difference to me. It's all just living."

Tomorrow is work

Enjoy