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In this day of age, it’s a commonality for business executives to place values on every possible aspect of their business on everything except the daunting aspects that would increase their immediate costs. A great example would be the lack of focus on employee treatment and work environment. Obviously, immediately improving these factors would lead to increase in costs for businesses, which detriments the gold to these businesses, which are profits. However, perhaps it is time for businesses to change this way of doing things, and look at the hard facts of the importance of good employee treatment. 

In an article written by Jena Mcgregor for the Washington Post, it is mentioned that ‘ More Americans ranked workers above all other issues or stakeholders — things like customers, products, the environment or communities — when it comes to determining a business’s behavior.‘ Obviously, the way consumers determine a business’ ethical practices and integrity hugely relies on the satisfaction of the employee of said businesses. And as we learned in class, brand positioning, or rather the question of how consumers view a business plays a major role in their consumption decisions. Therefore, it would be wise for businesses to focus on the factor of employee satisfaction – just like Zappos, a company that was talked about in our lecture about Human Resources, and widely praised for its exceptional employee treatment. 

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Zappos is a company known to put their values on having ‘purpose’, and according to them ‘satisfied employees are a crucial part of a purposeful company‘. So, Zappos ensures that their employees are satisfied by setting aside for employees to do fun things such as Oreo eating competitions, electric car races, etc… In doing so Zappos is positioning themselves as a company that provides exceptional care for their workers, and is ALSO providing grounds for not only ‘smarter employees, but for more social employees who take more pride in their collective work’. So, in the end Zappos is not only appealing to the majority of Americans who place their value priorities on employee treatment, but is also a company that is filled with high productivity workers. In addition, my classmate Joshua Ting wrote an interesting blog post regarding the benefits of starting a business with a friend, and mentions that ”people are 12% more productive when they are in a happy environment and 10% less productive in an unhappy environment.  That’s a 22% difference in productivity! ”.  

Besides the fact that the MAJORITY of Americans view employee treatment at utmost importance, it also provides numerous benefits such a higher productivity in workers. So, to all you profit-maximizing businesses neglecting their employee satisfaction to cut costs, how’s that for an increase in profit?