And employee satisfaction was linked with higher productivity and profitability. Recent research based on data compiled by Gallup looking at 1.9 million employees across 73 countries shows a positive correlation between employee satisfaction and customer loyalty and a negative link with employee turnover. ![]() And ultimately, it could damage the business. If engineers felt they couldn’t disconnect, that wasn’t a culture Ostrum could feel great about. He believed employees should feel empowered to focus and create at work and to recharge fully during their personal time. It was also a challenge for Corporate Vice President Brett Ostrum. A few people leaving could turn into a network effect, leaders knew, which threatened to undermine the product successes they had worked so hard for. Seeing that one red bar on an otherwise green survey graph confirmed for leaders that what had become a nagging problem could quickly escalate into a retention issue if they didn’t address it successfully. But the negative sentiment about work-life flexibility meant a high risk of talent loss and an impact on innovation that the company simply could not afford. ![]() The engineers felt great about leadership, the culture, their opportunities for career development, and their pay and benefits. This 700-person group was a key component of a key part of Microsoft’s competitive business. Leaders had heard about the problem anecdotally, and in recent years the annual employee survey had confirmed it: On the poll, the engineering group consistently overperformed in all aspects of employee engagement except for work-life flexibility. By 2017 the business was steadily gaining momentum, changing consumers’ mindsets about Microsoft products and becoming a key symbol of the company’s public transformation.īut the executive heading the hardware engineering team had grown increasingly concerned about reports of poor work-life balance among engineers. But Microsoft listened to customers, iterated, and built the right product mix and core functionality. ![]() It was a strategically important move, but one that got off to a challenging start in 2012 in terms of product acceptance by customers and, consequently, sales numbers. Surface was an ambitious expansion from software into advanced hardware. In many ways, things were going extremely well with Microsoft Surface-the company’s primary hardware bet.
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