A Lesson in Employee Engagement… From A Vending Machine

With many of us enjoying a festive long weekend, both here in Canada as well as in the United States, I was reminded about the inspiration behind one of my most popular posts from the last several months, that touched on the connection between having a fun time and employee engagement. For recent readers of my blog, I’m sure you’ll find this an enjoyable and inspiring read. And for those of you who have been reading my blog for the last year or so, this will be a pleasant reminder of how to encourage collaboration and engagement within your team.

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Inspiration can be a curious thing.

I’m always amazed at how seemingly unrelated pieces can stir up new ideas or perspectives about our world and the way we live and conduct ourselves within it.  Take, for example, this commercial released on YouTube last week by Coca-Cola called the “Happiness Machine”.

While the commercial is effective in creating this idea of Coca-Cola being a source of happiness, there’s also a valuable lesson here that can be imparted to business leaders in how they interact with their employees.

It’s not hard to see that this social experiment by Coca-Cola led to a dramatic change in the mood of the students at this university cafeteria. Indeed, the level of enthusiasm and yes, happiness, created by this exercise probably made most of the students head off to class brimming with more energy to take on their assignments (and not just as a result of the expected sugar rush).

Where this gets interesting, though, is if we imagine seeing this kind of response in our employees.

What would it be like to have your team demonstrating the level of excitement and energy displayed by these students in this video? I’m sure it’s obvious to all of us the benefits of creating such a condition in our workplace, both to overall productivity as well as job satisfaction.

So how can we duplicate these results in our business or teams? Aside from the obvious giving stuff away for free, let’s look at what exactly Coca-Cola’s “Happiness Machine” did that created this sense of collaboration and engagement among the students:

1. Offer something unexpected
Obviously, when these students started using this vending machine, they had no idea that they would be receiving more than the bottle of Coke they were purchasing. And while initially, there must have been some personal satisfaction at getting these surprise bonuses, it becomes clear that as the situation moves on, the level of engagement and excitement moved beyond the participant to include everyone in the cafeteria.

Of course, this doesn’t mean businesses need to orchestrate something as elaborate as this “Happiness Machine”. After all, remember from the vantage point of the students, all that made this different was that the machine was giving out all sorts of stuff for free. In other words, it was simply turning what would normally be an unremarkable event into a simple gesture that would leave a much more lasting impression.

So instead of having another typical team meeting, secretly plan to end it early and surprise everyone by bringing out cocktail platters and giving your employees time to just relax and enjoy their work environment. Or announce an impromptu hockey game in the office parking lot – with a request for spectators needed to cheer the game on. The point is it doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate to plan – the only objective is to break up the routine and offer something to motivate your employees and raise team spirit.

2. A little kindness goes a long way
This is something we’ve all been told countless times by our parents and school teachers, but watching this video you can see the evidence behind this statement.

Granted, in this case, we’re talking about students getting free bottles of soda, flowers and even a massive submarine sandwich. But the real lesson to be learned here is that these students were not given these things as rewards for passing a difficult exam or getting an “A” grade on their latest paper. Instead, they were simply given these gifts as a gesture of appreciation with – as the machine’s name implies – the hope of generating happiness.

Bringing this back to what we can do in our businesses, again this has less to do with giving employees a material gift as it does the reason behind the gesture.

While it’s common practice for businesses to offer incentives for employees to take on a new task or assignment, it’s sadly a rare occurrence for leaders to offer praise or appreciation to employees for their own initiatives or efforts. In other words, instead of simply thinking one’s role is to evaluate and judge the performance of others, leaders need to understand the importance of validating what their employees see as their contribution to the company.

As before, this doesn’t require any huge effort or expense for companies. It could be something as simple as taking the time to stop by an employee’s desk after a meeting and thanking them in person for the contributions/insights they provided to the discussion. Or perhaps writing a personal note of thanks to an employee for the initiatives they undertook on a recent project, leaving it in their cubbyhole as an unexpected surprise in their day (a perfect tie-in to the first point made above).

Without question, Coca-Cola’s “Happiness Machine” video does a great job promoting the idea that their product can help spread smiles and good times amongst a group of people. What they probably didn’t expect was that they also demonstrated the value of fostering a sense of engagement and appreciation for those we work with.