Pret A Manger

Are Your Co-Workers Good For Your Health?

March 12, 2012 by Jonathan Becher

Last week I wrote about Pret A Manger which rewards employees on behaviors such as niceness and teamwork, not just traditional measures of performance. Pret believes incenting these behaviors improves the health of the organization which leads to more sustainable performance. A 2011 research study from Tel Aviv University backs them up and suggests having nice co-workers even improves employee health.

The researchers closely monitored 800 adults over twenty years, repeatedly interviewing them on a wide range of topics from the conditions in their workplace, the behavior of their bosses, and the niceness of their colleagues. Perhaps not surprisingly, the perceived niceness of co-workers was highly correlated with the risk of death. After all, friendly people help reduce stress and stress is deadly.

Read full blog post here.

Rewarding Teamwork

March 06, 2012 by Jonathan Becher

I believe every manager is a member of three teams:

1.The people that report to that manager. This is usually what someone means when they refer to “my team.”
2.The external stakeholders in other departments they work with every day. For example, marketing is often considered part of the extended team for sales or development.
3.Their peers in the same department or group. For example, the leaders of each sales region.

Unfortunately, most people think of either 1 or 2 as their primary team, prioritizing their time and decisions accordingly. They view their peers as competitors for fixed amounts of budget, headcount, and attention. This attitude can create unintended silos within a department.

For the last few months, I’ve been thinking about how to encourage teamwork among peers. As such, I was intrigued by a NY Times article about the British fast food chain Pret A Manger which hires, pays, and promotes employees on qualities like cheerfulness, not just pure performance. This thinking isn’t unique to Pret: the McKinsey book ‘Beyond Performance’ suggests that an organization’s health is even more important than traditional measures of performance.

Read full blog post here.