Episode 224: Why Measuring Happiness Matters Just as Much as Engagement (Interview with Shon Holyfield)
Can employee happiness be the key to unlocking peak productivity?
For years, organisations have invested heavily in employee engagement, recognising its impact on performance and retention. Research also suggests that employee engagement alone isn’t enough. Yet, many organisations still overlook it or struggle to measure it effectively.
In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, host David Green is joined by Shon Holyfield, Founder and CEO of Amazing Workplace, to explore why happiness should be measured alongside engagement—and how doing so can transform business outcomes.
Join them as they explore:
The difference between engagement and happiness, and why both matter for business success.
The key indicators of employee happiness and how they impact performance.
Why traditional engagement surveys may not capture the full picture of employee well-being.
How a more dynamic, real-time approach to measuring happiness can drive better business outcomes.
The role of transparency in happiness scores
How to balance privacy, authenticity, and psychological safety when collecting employee insights.
Listen now to learn how you can measure and improve employee happiness to unlock greater productivity, engagement, and business success.
This episode is sponsored by Amazing Workplace, an AI-powered platform designed to help companies grow and succeed by unlocking the full potential of their people. By providing the most accurate insights into how employees feel and why, Amazing Workplace equips leaders with powerful tools to drive meaningful improvements where they matter most.
With Amazing Workplace, companies have reduced turnover by up to 90%, have increased revenue by over 400%, and solved recruitment. Find out more at www.amazingworkplace.com
[0:00:00] David Green: For years, organisations have invested heavily in employee engagement, recognising its impact on performance and retention. But while studies find that engaged employees are more committed to their work, research also shows that happy employees don't just work harder, they collaborate better, are more resilient and bring more energy to their roles. Yet many organisations focus solely on measuring engagement without considering the deeper impact of employee happiness on workplace performance. So, how can companies ensure they are not just engaging their employees, but also creating an environment where they feel truly happy? And how can measuring happiness unlock greater productivity and business success?
I'm David Green and in today's episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, I'm joined by Shon Holyfield, Founder and CEO of Amazing Workplace. Shon has developed a fantastic human-centred approach to measuring happiness, and today he shares the relationship between engagement, happiness, and productivity, why organisations need to measure both, and how businesses can practically measure and improve happiness in a way that directly boosts performance. So, if you want to create an organisation where employees aren't just engaged, but also truly happy and productive, this is an episode you won't want to miss. So, let's get the conversation started.
Hi Shon, welcome to the show. Really looking forward to this conversation. So, to kick things off, please could you start by telling us a little bit about you, your background and your journey to where you are today?
[0:01:49] Shon Holyfield: David, thank you. I'm really thrilled to be here and I want to thank you so very much for all that you do to empower and help HR professionals all over the world. It's a beautiful thing that you do. So, thank you for inviting me and hosting me. A little bit about myself. I'm a husband, I'm a dad of three amazing kids. I'm also a chef. I'm an artist, I like to sculpt stone. I'm a huge nerd. I love board games, Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons. And all the neat stuff aside, I'm also an attorney. I went to Notre Dame Law School and Yale School of Management, and I started my career as a tax attorney. It's not really a party-starter, but I spent the first 20 years of my career focused on really getting tax right for companies that I worked for. And while working at a Fortune 500 company and discovering that existing tax software and tools failed to deliver the results that we needed, I did what I knew how to do best, which was just research. And I actually got on the phone, called every head of tax that I knew, AT&T, Comcast, and others -- I was in the telecommunications industry -- what do they use; what worked; what didn't work?
In that journey, I discovered that there was a major gap in the tax software market. People wanted to really be able to easily understand tax answers and the process was anything but easy in that industry. So, I knew there had to be a better way. And three years later or so, I founded my tax software company to solve those problems. I was the CEO of that company for about ten years. And in that time, we worked with the largest companies in the world. We worked with Walmart, Apple, Amazon, thousands more. And about ten years later, I sold that company for just under a half a billion dollars to a publicly traded company.
But all of that as context and background is to answer your questions, which is the journey to where I am today. It was during the course of running that company that I discovered, for the first time, the value and importance of measuring employee happiness and actually creating an amazing workplace. That's long-winded background to a short answer, which is in the middle of all of that, it was the discovery of Amazing Workplace.
[0:04:00] David Green: So, tell us more about Amazing Workplace. What were the drivers behind starting Amazing Workplace; what do you do; who do you work with; those sorts of things?
[0:04:10] Shon Holyfield: So, at this point, we work with thousands of companies, which is amazing and great. But in terms of what were the drivers behind starting Amazing Workplace, it ties into that story that we just talked about. And I'm not someone who shies away from my failures. And candidly, I was failing my people as a CEO within the first several years of running that tax company. And the symptoms were everywhere. We had a turnover problem, we struggled with recruiting, productivity was inconsistent at best, which is not a negative statement for the employees that were working there, it was a negative statement for the leadership or lack of leadership that I failed to demonstrate as well to get into my organisation. Our culture wasn't great because we hadn't created one. In fact, at that time, if somebody had asked me, "What is culture?" I probably couldn't have even answered the question. And it was the complete opposite of what I wanted, and was also taught about my whole life.
My mother and my grandmother were very instrumental in my upbringing, and they definitely raised me to genuinely care for others, not make fun of people, not make fun of people's backgrounds, religions, anything. It was just the way I was raised. Funnily enough, at that moment, it was a very similar moment to when I went to create my tax company. It was really, I had all of these problems, I didn't know what to do, so I fell back on the one thing that I was trained to do, which was research. And much like when I went to create the tax company, I called everybody that I knew. I called folks that I knew at Amazon, at Walmart, elsewhere, and asked them the same questions that I asked way back when, when I was in a Fortune 500 company, which is what do you use; what works; what doesn't work?
At that time, though I was on this journey for tax stuff, what I discovered was that there was a pretty major gap in the HR tools made available to HR professionals. The feedback that I got from a number of executives was that they weren't happy with the existing tools that they had, and they really wanted to know -- everyone I talked to, one for one, wanted to know how their people felt, so they could handle recruiting, productivity, turnover, culture, right, these things that you talk about all the time. So, I went in and started to look for myself. I dug into every HR platform that existed at the time, surveys, where they came from, the origin story of employee surveys, you know, morale that started in the 1940s led into satisfaction in the 1980s, eventually engagement in the 2000s. And researched and found that nearly every question that had been asked on every survey since the beginning of time, beginning of employee surveys, the 1940s, thousands of questions, pulled them all together, and it was after all this research that I concluded that the most important thing to an employee is actually just feeling happy at work. And that single metric, happiness, was also simultaneously the solution to recruiting, productivity, turnover, culture. And that was really the start of Amazing Workplace.
Now that said, I needed results in my tax company. I wasn't here to start a new company, I was trying to solve these problems within my organisation, right? So, I applied what I learned, focused on happiness, and here's the rest of the story. About 18 months later, for the last six years of that tax company, we were ranked as one of the top three organisations to work in the Pacific Northwest in the US. Our turnover dropped from a staggering 20% to 30%, depending on the year, to 0% over the last four years that I ran that organisation. We had people actively reaching out to our organisation, looking for jobs, though we had no job postings. It was purely word of mouth and reputation. Our culture was strong, there was laughter in the office daily, and happiness was the key. I don't mean some feel-good foosball table happiness, though we did have a foosball table, but a genuine heartfelt, like, how are you really doing? What's working, what's not? Let's fix it, rinse, repeat.
[0:08:03] David Green: And presumably, I mean you told me you sold the company for half a billion dollars, so obviously you were successful as a business as well. And did this shift over those last four years, did it actually help drive business performance as well?
[0:08:18] Shon Holyfield: Oh, absolutely. Our growth trajectory, and I wish I had the graphs to show you, but our growth trajectory was strong in the first four to five years. It was not bad, but when you look at the graph, it looks like a hockey stick. When we shifted over to happiness, it just went straight up in vertical. And it was that rapid period of growth, as those that are watching probably know, that got the attention of potential buyers for them to reach out and to give us the valuation that we did. We ended up with a 20X multiple, which is kind of unheard of in that space. I mean, it's unusual. A lot of times you'll see an 8 to 12 times EBITDA, or what have you. We got 20X revenue.
Interesting side note. When the company that acquired us was then interviewed about the acquisition, one of the top three things they talked about was the happiness of our employees and those rankings and all of that. So, it obviously not only was instrumental in creating a great culture, reducing turnover, making recruiting easy, productivity skyrocketed, growth skyrocketed; but for the acquirer who went in and invested the money in us, it was a big deal for them to communicate to those investors that they had as to the value of investing in an organisation that had that. One further side, and I don't think I'm breaking confidentiality by saying this, two years after acquisition, which was the period of time that I was with that organisation, great company, we had 0% turnover from the people that were brought over, which is also unheard of.
[0:09:50] David Green: So, in your view, what is employee happiness? And other than what you've already said, why is it so important for businesses to really focus on this?
[0:10:02] Shon Holyfield: So, this is not a criticism, but it's just a candid observation, and it's something that I myself suffered from early on in my career. Happiness often gets conflated with other words. And what I mean by that is that you have two separate words that are not the same and we mush them together in our head and we think they're the same, right? So, happiness is simply defined as a feeling glad. It was created around 1150. I mean, obviously the idea of happiness dates back to the dawn of time, but in terms of where we record where words were created, which is predominantly Rome, Latin, so it was about 1150. 350 years later, the word satisfaction was created, which originally meant to have enough. These are not the same, right? And in fact, if you think about your personal life, I don't think anybody comes up to a loved one and says, I'm just satisfied with our relationship, and the result being some feel-good moment, right? Happiness is probably a little bit higher on the chain, so they're not the same.
Then we fast-forward to 1990 and engagement was created by Bill, by William Kahn. But it's defined and measured differently by each company that sells a product. So, there's a little complexity there just because, as you know, and I think you're a very smart, outspoken advocate on the value of making things simple and understandable, and that can create some challenges, right? But the most common definition, I think, of employee engagement, there's many, is loosely, "The enthusiasm and dedication that a person feels towards this organisation", which those are great things to want to achieve or obtain. I think that tackles the question of what is happiness, right? And then I think there was a second question there, which is, why is it important?
I would say that happiness is important because we finally have the one thing that, if measured and improved, gives people and business owners what they both want and need. It's a win-win. But I think more importantly, it's actually a solution. And let me walk through that for a second. Solutions work, right? So, logically, we have to work backwards from what we want in a business in order to identify what we need to measure and do to achieve it. We want to grow and be financially successful; we want to attract top talent; we'd love for people to be productive, and candidly, if people are productive, they often feel happy, and if they're happy, they're often more productive. It's just a beautiful circle, right? And we want to retain our best people. Well, success and growth, countless surveys by Harvard, Oxford, MIT, educators, and more, point to companies that have happy employees, have built strong cultures, based on happiness, based on purpose, based on meaning, really outperform and grow faster than businesses without. And I think that research is pretty well established and I hope pretty widely disseminated.
Recruiting, people read online reviews to find out whether or not employees are happy working at a company. Nobody goes and compares engagement scores. And in fact, if engagement scores were the key to recruiting, we would put them in our job postings, which we don't. But happy employee reviews and/or happiness scores absolutely help with recruiting. Employee happiness is actually a magnet for top talent. Productivity, Oxford study that was done, I think in 2023, proves that happy employees are factually more productive. It was the first field study on happiness they did in conjunction with British telecom. And that is common sense amongst the executives that we talk with, right? It's just kind of common knowledge that that if we're focusing on happiness, it's more likely that people are going to be productive.
Then, turnover. When's the last time you quit a job because your engagement score was low? People quit jobs because they're not happy, people stay because they are happy. And engagement, as measured, doesn't meaningfully reduce turnover. And again, I'm not talking about the efforts that are put in by HR folks as they use engagement as a tool, they absolutely do great things to reduce turnover. I'm just specifically talking about the distinction between engagement and happiness as a driver, right?
[0:14:13] David Green: Yeah, you're not saying engagement's a bad thing. You're just saying that --
[0:14:16] Shon Holyfield: Not at all.
[0:14:17] David Green: -- it might not be enough and it might not be outcomes that you've talked about around recruiting, productivity, attrition, you can't necessarily correlate, well, you can correlate anything to anything, but engagement isn't necessarily a cause of those three things. I think from what you're saying, you're saying happiness is more likely to drive those three outcomes.
[0:14:36] Shon Holyfield: Correct, and engagement can still validly be used as an important metric. I put it on that list. In other words, we want to recruit, we want increased productivity, we like to retain our people. We would also like our people to feel engaged, to be whatever the definition is, dedicated, enthusiastic. But when we look at what drives that, it's actually happiness. If I'm a happy employee, I'm probably pretty enthusiastic, right? I'm also probably more dedicated to my workplace because I'm happy working there. So, happiness is really a driver of engagement, not the other way around.
[0:15:15] David Green: How do you measure employee happiness? Are there any pointers for listeners to maybe start implementing in their organisations, or maybe if they're already doing it to a degree, how they can roll it out further?
[0:16:49] Shon Holyfield: Yeah. I mean, as we get into measuring employee happiness, I want to answer that question head on, but I also want to just kind of back up to the key successful things we're trying to achieve, the recruiting, the productivity, the growth, the low turnover engagement is maybe something else that we're wanting to achieve. Companies have been trying to solve these leading indicators or these things for almost a hundred years, if not longer, right. So, there's a whole history there, but in terms of how we get to measuring happiness. But it was really based on a number of things that I'd researched, as well as interviews that were done with William Kahn, that inspired me to take a fresh look at this entire area.
Bill was interviewed in the early 2020s, and he was asked what he thought about employee engagement. And his response was that it was, "Violently and fundamentally different than what [he] wrote about in 1990". What he was talking about was the important interpersonal relationship between an employee and their direct leader, and that in order for anyone to meaningfully improve the engagement he was talking about, we had to find out how the person was doing, which was really for me a bit of a catalyst. So, we had to start over. Amazing Workplace couldn't just come in and copy/paste/edit what had been done, so we had to start from scratch. And if I learned anything from the hundreds of research articles and history of employee surveys, we knew one thing, that something new had to be done.
So, we had to develop a new technology, which is interesting and ironically not really a new technology. It's maybe a technology as old as time, which is the idea of a conversation. So, it's a way to connect with people and truly find out how they're doing. And we knew it always worked when it was done live and in person. In other words, every HR issue that I had to tackle when I was running my tax company was able to be resolved if we just got in communication with someone, if we were able to have a conversation, right? But how do we do that at scale? How do we take that idea of a human conversation and using technology, create something that feels, looks, acts like a conversation. And that's what led to the creation of a proprietary conversation system. And it looks and feels like a live human conversation, just like a conversation you have with a friend. It starts with a topic, you briefly talk about the topic, you describe why we're here to talk about this particular thing, it provides context and understanding. Once that's established, the system then opens up by asking the person how they feel about that topic.
So, if you and I were to talk about your favourite music, right, I hear you listening to music, for example, and I say, "David, I'd love to talk to you about your favourite music", and you go, "Great, that's the topic". "How do you feel about music?" "Well, I really love it". "Okay, great". And then from that point, based on your response, I would then naturally ask you follow-up questions. So, the system is smart enough to change the questions that are asked based on the feeling. So, if you were happy about music, it would naturally ask David like, "Hey, so why do you feel happy about music?" If you weren't, it would naturally ask, "Well, why don't you feel happy about music?" Or, "What would make you feel happier about music?" We discovered that this had been missing in the technology.
But then we didn't stop there because it's not enough to just ask questions, how do you feel and then why. And this was a major breakthrough and it's actually our patent pending technology. We realised that in every human conversation, at the tail end, there's a confirmation, meaning that, "I've heard everything you've said, I've looked at your facial expressions, I've heard your tone of voice" and we naturally confirm our understanding of how people feel, based on what they've said and other factors. So, we'll often say something like, "It sounds like you feel happy", or, "It sounds like you feel unsatisfied about the topic"; "It sounds like you feel happy about music", or, "It sounds like you really feel unsatisfied with the new music that's coming out today". And that verification at the very end is so key to understanding, which led to the development of a second technology, which is our patent pending feeling verification technology.
So, our system is smart enough to look at all of the information shared, the reasons why people feel the way they do, the comments they leave, the sentiment, and even more. We've got AI and other technology that does this in real time. And then in real time, it then presents to the person that's going through this conversation on their phone or on their computer, how it appears that they feel. It takes its best guess at how happy that person feels overall, and then it asks them, "Is that right?" just like you would with a friend, right, "Is that right?" And they're given the opportunity to change, which just like a normal conversation, gives you a really solid foundation and understanding of how people feel. I mean, it's really accurate, but it's also really different.
[0:21:51] David Green: What's the feedback been from those organisations that are working with you at Amazing Workplace? And what's the feedback been from employees, who presumably have taken hundreds of engagement surveys in the past?
[0:22:05] Shon Holyfield: Well, the one I'm most proud of is we just recently broke 10,000 employee reviews. And what I mean by that is the employees that went through our conversation platform made the time at the tail end to leave us a five-star review. And we just broke 10,000, actually I think we're over 12,000 now, five-star employee reviews. And the feedback is overwhelmingly positive from the employee experience, and the themes are pretty much the same. They really appreciate that someone's asking them how they feel, and they like the focus on happiness. They prefer the conversations over the tests that they've been taking for years, the survey tests. And then there's some additional themes that we've seen that come out of those positive feedback statements from employees. But those are the predominant themes. It may not seem like a big deal, but if we just pause for a moment, making the time to go to our people and say, "I really would love for you to be happy at work. I'd love for you to look forward to coming to work. I can't wave a magical wand and make that happen, but I care about it and I like to measure it and I like to focus on it, and would love your help in discovering what we can do to make that outcome possible".
I think probably one of the most meaningful stories, I won't get into which company it was, but large manufacturer, they were suffering from very high turnover. And in about ten months, we were able to reduce their turnover by 90%. But what really stood out was that they were losing senior, experienced on-the-floor experts that were leaving and they didn't know why. And what came out of the conversations and the feedback, one of which really just stuck with me, you know, you get these comments and they stick with you and you just love them, right. So, here's an individual who's been working for 35 years and was with this company I think for over 20, and this older individual, they're all confidential anonymous, so I don't know who it was, made the time to say, "Thank you. It means a lot to me, after all the years that I've put in and worked here, that you're talking about how I feel in my happiness, and that matters a lot to me and I appreciate it". And that was just sort of as an aside comment that this individual left as they were giving obviously feedback and so forth. But we see that a lot, we read that a lot, because it matters to people that they matter to their company, if that makes sense.
[0:24:47] David Green: And you partly answered my next question, which was around actionability, because we can do a survey or we can have a conversation, we can analyse and start to understand why, but ultimately it's all about the action, isn't it? And it sounds like what you're doing at Amazing Workplace gives insights, it tells companies why things are happening or not happening, and they're able to turn that into actions and then improve results, such as in the example you gave there as well. And I guess that's the key thing, isn't it, it's the actionability piece?
[0:26:34] Shon Holyfield: Yeah, we've got an action plan system. I'd have to get into a deeper dive as to how we've structured the conversations. But at a high level, every conversation, as I mentioned, has topics. There's the follow-up questions based on the responses, it's dynamic. But because we have hundreds of thousands of responses from employees, and we've applied really smart AI closed system for confidentiality purposes, but we know the most common themes or most common reasons that people feel happy or don't, based on lots and lots of these that we've done. So, when an individual goes through the conversation, they're presented some options that they can just choose from, or they can write their own, right? But what's nice about that is that those options that they can just choose from, that then come into the platform, allow us to very quickly identify why someone feels this way, separate and apart from individual comments that are left, if, if that makes sense. It makes it then easier to take action.
The beauty of that is, as we've done the research and those, let's just say that it's a top-ten ranking, the top ten most common reasons that we've seen come in from responses from employees, and in some cases that list is longer, we on our side take the top however many there are and our research team then goes and solves, "What would you do about that?" And they draft and write action ideas that are in our platform connected to each of those set-in-stone responses, or canned responses, if you will, that you can dynamically change. And it just makes life a little bit easier for the HR professionals. So, I'm not having to go do a bunch of research as to how to solve this problem.
[0:28:31] David Green: So, in our recently published People Analytics Trends Research at Insight222, we found one of the eight characteristics of leading companies in people analytics are those that value the democratisation of insights, so presumably, the findings from the work that you've been doing around employee happiness. In your experience, does providing this level of transparency help enhance employee happiness? Or, might it have unintended negative effects, particularly for those that maybe aren't so happy at work?
[0:29:02] Shon Holyfield: Yeah. So, transparency and open communication, in my experience, wins the day, absolutely. I think I touched on this earlier, but be open with your people, and don't shy away from talking about what you want to achieve with your people and/or through your people. Let's consider this, okay? If we want to increase sales, don't we talk about it? Don't we measure it? If we want to get a project done by a specific date, don't we openly talk about that? Don't we track it? Don't we have project managers that track that information? Happiness is no different. If we want to achieve something, we should be talking about it; and if we're not talking about it, it's highly unlikely we're going to achieve it. And by making the time to tell your people that you want them to be happy at work, once you've measured it -- and I was kind of shifting gears here. So, that's what I would recommend at a high level.
To add a bit to that, if I may, the way that we recommended at Amazing Workplace, and whether it's engagement, whether it's happiness, whatever you're trying to pursue, you really want to start by what's going well. And that's the right thing to do with your people, is to get your folks together. It could be an email, it could be a company meeting, it could be a monthly live meeting or Zoom meeting, or whatever it may be. But the very first step is to recognise everybody for the positive. And when I say recognise, I mean simply point out the good things that have been done. These positive outcomes are as a result of our people, so let's make the time to recognise them openly and communicate that. And let folks know that everyone in the organisation meaningfully contributed to this positive outcome, whatever that may be, and then talk about those areas where people feel happier, they feel engaged, and celebrate it. It doesn't have to be, like, you don't have to throw parties, but I mean at least a round of applause, right, you know, thank everyone for this for this outcome, and thank them from the heart, and I think that matters a lot. And I would start there.
Now, once people feel genuinely recognised, which just can take a few moments, it's I think equally valuable to openly share those areas where there's room for improvement. And as a senior executive, as a leader, you'll be admired and you'll be respected for not shying away from those areas that aren't going as well. And be proud that your people made the time to care enough about your organisation to point out the things that they'd like changed. I mean, what a gift, what an amazing gift that you have a group of people who are willing to go through this process and share with you what would actually enrich their lives at work, right? And that, at least in our experience, is worth genuinely thanking them for.
Then, if it's me as a leader, touch on those areas that we're not doing as well at a high level. You don't need to do a deep dive, but make time to look at those. Pick a few. It doesn't have to be all of them. Just pick one, pick two things that's on that list where there's room for improvement. Get those things done, and then get back with your people and let them know that those changes were made because of them, so that you're encouraging a cycle, you're encouraging every individual to contribute to communicating what's needed and wanted. And for those that aren't happy, that'll often change just by virtue of the fact that they've seen that our organisation listens, thanks us for our feedback and makes change. And I think a lot of us do this right now using engagement, but that's the recipe, which ties back to that transparency.
[0:32:48] David Green: We're going to get to the question of the series in a minute, Shon, but firstly, what an inspiring story that you applied this ethos within your tax advisory firm, you reduced attrition, you became a talent magnet for high talent that wanted to join the organisation, your productivity went up, you were a very successful organisation and you sold it. And then, you worked in that company for two years and applied this within there, and you still had no attrition, even after an acquisition, which is incredible. You've then obviously taken that ethos to actually create a company that is to help other companies drive employee happiness. I think that's a really inspiring story for listeners to hear, and clearly shows how passionate you personally are about this topic. So, before we move to the question of the series, what is the one key takeaway you'd like our listeners to keep at the forefront of their mind from our conversation today?
[0:33:47] Shon Holyfield: My response to that would simply be, find a way to have fun every day. HR can be tough, and at times we get so busy putting out fires created by typically a really small percentage of the whole, that it's easy to lose sight of the beautiful environment or outcomes that we're creating. I believe, I'd like to believe, maybe I'm being overly optimistic, that most professionals get into HR because they genuinely care about people. And candidly, most of your people at work are probably happy. And engagement scores aside, whatever else that's being looked at, don't believe everything you read in the news, just look around. Your people are probably mostly happy. And you got into this job, you decided to pursue this career, because each of you wanted to make the world a better place. And that's something that I hope every one of the listeners is proud of, I hope it's something that they share with the people they love. I hope when those that they love ask them, "What do you do?" "I help make the world a better place". "Well, how do you do that?" "I go to work every day and I put out a lot of fires, as it relates to HR issues, but I'm there to really protect the organisation, get the best people, find ways to listen to meaningfully improve their experience at work, and keep them". And that's, that's something that people will look back years from now and be appreciative of. They may not even know your name, right?
My Nana lived to be 99 years old, and I'll share this real quick and tie to this in terms of what's something I want people to leave with. Beautiful, just great individual, caring, came up through some really difficult times. And as I started this company, she was still living. She didn't know what I was doing in terms of this company and the details of it, at much, much older. But I was curious and I asked her, "Nana, where's the best place you ever worked?" And she just lit up, she got this big smile on her face and she started recalling this flower shop in rural Pennsylvania and how much fun they had and the owners were great, and they laughed at work. And she just shared this whole story, fully animated. And I asked, "Well, what made it that the best place you ever worked?" And I kid you not, her very first response was, "Everyone was happy".
That's the outcome that HR professionals are creating every day. As you're dealing with that miserable thing that you're dealing with, you've got to remember that years from now, there'll be someone out there like my Nana that will look back, hopefully at your workplace, they may not know your name, they may not know it was you that was behind it, behind the curtain, but that experience that they will look back and share with their grandchildren or share with their people they love has your fingerprints all over it. That's what I would want every HR professional to leave with. That fills your cup up. It kind of gives you the fuel that you need to get through the day sometimes, because sometimes those days are not pleasant. And anyone in HR knows what I'm talking about.
[0:37:01] David Green: Yeah, I think they do, and I'm sure there's a few heads nodding as they listen to this. Shon, this is the question of the series coming up, this is one we're asking everyone in this series of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. And I think I know where this one's going to go and I'm looking forward to it actually. How do you align HR and business strategies to ensure employee experience directly contributes to company success?
[0:37:27] Shon Holyfield: I'm going to be a bit bold here, David, and I'm going to say, I think, yeah, I think we've finally solved it. And what I really mean by that is, company success we know depends on people, getting the best people, getting them to be productive, retaining the best people, all of this and financial success. We could throw engagement in the ring. And employee happiness is the only thing we've found that if measured and improved, drives each one of these important business outcomes towards success. It's not just about morale. It's a business growth strategy that finally fully aligns HR and business.
[0:38:11] David Green: Perfect. And I think the best thing about it is it drives business performance, from listening to you today, and it makes people feel good. What could be a better combination than that, to be perfectly honest with you? Shon, thank you so much for joining me on the Digital HR Leaders podcast today and sharing your inspiring story and the fabulous work that you're doing at Amazing Workplace. How can listeners find out more about you? How can they find out more about Amazing Workplace?
[0:38:41] Shon Holyfield: I've done this before, some people raise their eyebrow when I do it. Anyone can email me directly, that's step one. If you want to get in contact with me, it's shon@amazingworkplace.com. Wide open. I'm pretty good about responding to email; text, not so much, I'm still working on that. Just the volume of communication sometimes is a bit too much, but email I'm good at. You can check us out on our YouTube channel, the Amazing Workplace YouTube channel, LinkedIn, or www.amazingworkplace.com. And we do have a social media presence, but we're just really kicking that off. We previously had somebody else managing that, so we've got a team that's taking that over, so excited to start to produce more content there for folks that are interested in wanting to meaningfully improve their workplace.
[0:39:32] David Green: And I suspect there'll be a large and ready audience for that, Shon. And you might find that your inbox is about to fill up. So, thank you so much for being on the show today, really enjoyed the conversation. I've taken at least two or three stories from it, which I'll probably be repeating. I will cite you, of course…
[0:39:54] Shon Holyfield: Thank you.
[0:39:55] David Green: … that I've heard them there. But thank you very much.
[0:39:58] Shon Holyfield: David, thank you. I admire so much of all that you're doing, and I really am honoured to have spent some time with you today. Thank you.