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Great post below from the ThinkHR blog:

It turns out the key to start-up success isn’t just hot investors. It isn’t a slow burn rate. And it’s not always a cutting edge product. It’s building the right company culture, one founded on employee “happiness.”

Or at least so says Marc Lore, the founder and chief executive of Jet.com, in a very interesting piece on the front page of Sunday Business section of the New York Times. The company, a rival to Amazon, believes that what will make it successful in the long term is a high level of employee happiness.  The piece details the pains Jet.com takes to keep its employees satisfied, well beyond typical start-up perks like stock options, free meals and snacks. That includes a high level of transparency, contracts favorable to employees, and a regular “Happiness Pulse” survey to better understand how employees feel.

The piece illustrates what we’ve long believed at ThinkHR, which is that creating an employee-friendly culture is a critical factor for nearly any company to succeed. Happy workers are more efficient, pleasant, and likely to stay at the company longer. As the article describes, “Jet has a chance to thrive in the long term only if it has the smartest and most motivated employees – and if it can prevent them from fleeing at the first sign of trouble.”

Of course, building a great corporate culture takes committed management and empowered HR professionals who have the knowledge and tools to help their employees to succeed. It’s great to see the buzz about a high profile tech company (one of the so-called “unicorns”) embracing progressive HR practices as an overarching business strategy.

To read the article, click here. For more information from ThinkHR on creating high quality corporate cultures and other HR best practices, click here.