In this episode of Happy Here, Wisq CEO Jim Barnett and Torch CPO Amy Lavoie dig into the connection between happiness and business results.
Amy talks about the key drivers of happiness at work: purpose, empowerment, clarity, growth, connection, and well-being. Lastly, Amy and Jim talk about showing feelings at work—and how Amy leans into emotions as an opportunity to reflect and glean valuable insights.
Read the full transcript below.
Jim: I'm so excited today to introduce our guest, Amy Lavoie. Amy's been a widely respected thought and people leader in the employee engagement and happiness space for decades. She's the VP of people's success at Torch of People Development platform that unlocks the potential of individuals, teams, and organizations.
And by the way, a really great coaching platform that we use at. Amy has spent her career studying and practicing the science and happiness and success at work Prior to Torch, Amy led development and integration of people science into products, messaging and services for one of the companies I actually founded Glint, which is the leading employee engagement.
Welcome Amy.
Amy: Hi, Jim. It is so nice to see you and so nice to be here.
Jim: Yeah. It's so fun to be together to talk about some of the topics that are most special to both of us, and you're an expert in driving and measuring and.
Engagement and success and happiness. How did you become interested in the science of happiness at work?
Amy: In some ways, I kind of stumbled into it by following just a curiosity that I've always had around why some groups thrive and some people find work to be really enriching, whereas others seem to suffer and feel really depleted at work.
And particularly I was, I have been interested for a long time in the role of leadership and influencing that. And after serving as an HR business partner and supporting several different leaders around the, the C-suite, I noticed that so often, even if a leader really wanted to do the right thing for their people, they struggled to prioritize it.
in large part, it just wasn't quantifiable the way the rest of their business was. And so that led me on this path to really digging into people data, what can we measure about the, the employee experience? What are the patterns that we typically see? How can we influence and change those? And really the research to support why people strategy is such a critical part of business strategy.
Jim: You've worked with some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. So what's this connection between employee happiness and business success?
Amy: One thing I like to, kind of step back and and think about is what does it feel like when. You are working with or working at, or when you see an organization that really focuses on employee happiness and it's, it's an undeniable connection.
you've really achieved it when employees take on the mission of the company as their own personal mission. And when this happens, everyone at the company is a leader because they're intrinsically motivated to succeed and to inspire those around them.
And in those organizations, performance really takes care of itself. And you see that through greater revenue performance, greater retention, people getting promoted and being able to grow the organization. You see it in NPS and how people rate the organization and Glassdoor. There's so many connections points when you get it right.
So that's what I, I try to inspire in my consulting work as well as at my own organization.
Jim: So it sounds like you're saying when, when you think about the data that proves this connection between happiness and results, sounds like there's a lot of data.
You mentioned some of them, NPS retention, attrition levels, things like that. Are there other types of data that you'd recommend companies use to monitor the connection between engagement levels and business results?
Amy: Yeah, so one of the most common ways that can be really effective is through. The sentiment of people, which can be gathered through employee surveys.
There's a lot of new and innovative ways to understand the sentiment of people and understand their experiences that are pretty exciting to think about. But it all generally comes down to employee feedback. What are they, what are they saying about [00:04:00] the, the, not just the experience that they're having, but also what are they saying about the strategy?
What are they saying about. The quality of our product, what are they saying about their clarity about those things and how empowered they feel to be able to achieve them? Those are all organizational health indicators that can really give you a view into not just how they're doing, but the success of the organization because each person that joins a company is tru.
Joining because they believe that this company is gonna be successful and they believe that they can play a huge part in that.
I will say too, just really tangibly my favorite kind of Uber metric to understand the health of your employees is a question that we actually developed at Glenn through lots of research and it's really the leading indicator of engagement.
And it's the question: how happy do you feel at 'company name'? This is a really magical question, because first of all, it's conversational. It's the way that we think and talk in our real lives. we don't ask people like, how engaged do you feel? Or, What's your satisfaction level?
We talk like, 'are you happy at your work?' And so statistically, that question is actually representative of all those things we sometimes see in these very long HR surveys like loyalty and pride and recommendation and all of those things. But it's it's one Uber question, and I think simplicity's so important here.
I recommend all leaders keep tabs on, on a regular basis to, to really understand the health of, of their organization, and that question is also one of the highest predictors of business performance as well.
Jim: Can you share a little bit about what are some of these key drivers of happiness and success at work that you're focusing? as I mentioned, we try to keep these drivers of happiness and success at work at the core of everything that we do on our team at Torch, and we try to really weave those into all aspects of the employee journey.
Amy: So, These are these key drivers, which according to the research, and this is millions of data points across thousands of organizations, but we as humans universally need six things to feel happy at work. We need purpose, we need empowerment. We need clarity. I e. Knowing what to focus on and also getting feedback to improve, we need growth, so we always wanna feel like we are being challenged and learning and increasing our, our impact.
We need connection, which is obviously something that's really important to you and to, to whisk as well, and that we need to feel seen as unique individuals and be able to connect with others. And then finally, We need wellbeing, which is something that has, has increased in importance. Actually both connection and wellbeing have really increased in importance since the pandemic.
what I wanted to do was think about how can we make it as easy as possible for people to understand and. And all of these drivers.[00:07:00]
So we've rolled out two key strategies to try to facilitate that. So one is what we call the people success check-in. And this is essentially based on a five minute scorecard. So each employee fills out how that they're feeling relative to each of these drivers that I just mentioned. I like to call them buckets by the way.
So you can kind of visualize that. You need to keep these buckets full in order to, to feel great at at work. I love that. Kinda have that. Great. Yeah. So what happens is once a month an employee will reflect, How full each of these buckets are. So we have a question about each one. So an employee, for example, might rate, how does your sense of connection feel at Torch or as part of the Clarity driver, how focused do you feel and
How do you feel like you're performing? So it's a self-reflection and something that goes straight to their manager, takes five minutes to complete, and then they're getting, becoming more aware of how they're doing and their manager is able to understand where they might be feeling a little depleted and how to support them.
And it's really built around a conversation, which I know Jim, you is something you agree with as well, is that the magic of the data is when it leads to a great conversation. So the idea of this is all about reflect and then talk about it. And help to know each other in a more meaningful way between a manager and a leader.
And that it also, gives us at the, this, the center of the organization at the top of the organization data to understand the health of our people. So that's the people success check-in and scorecard. And then this leads to this other, another strategy that I'm really excited about, which is what we call unlocking potential.
So, as you mentioned, our mission at Torch is to unlock the potential of people, teams, and organizations. So what we've done is with each of the drivers, as people fill out their scorecards, we have resources, ideas, and actions to help them, think about how they can fill that bucket if it's running low.
Jim: I love that. The six buckets. Can you remind everybody one more time what those six buckets are?
Amy: Definitely. It's purpose, empowerment, clarity, growth, connection, and wellbeing.
Jim: Connection's very important to me and to us at Wisq, so I'm curious a little bit more about that. What's the role of connection and belonging in creating high levels of engagement?
Amy: Yeah, so let me first define connection So the definition of it, and this is again based on research from the team at Glint, LinkedIn is about inclusion and belonging. And when you feel connection, you feel a sense of belonging as a uniquely valued, trusted, and integral member of a diverse community of people who appreciate your contributions.
You have collaborative and high quality relationships with your colleagues, so that's, think about all the things that go into that. First, you have to feel uniquely valued. You have to feel like you can bring your best self to work, and you don't have to kind of turn off parts of who you are when you walk in the door.
You need to feel like you belong. that is actually something that people appreciate about you and that helps you to do your work and to bring that unique perspective and that you have, a really highly collaborative team. where everyone is bringing that sense of uniqueness in.
So those are some of the ways that the research explains this concept of connection.
Jim: You talked a little bit about data, and I'd love to pivot here a little bit and talk a little bit more about - how does a company figure out like what's the right amount of people data that we should be collecting and how do we bring the power of analytics to the table, to the C-suite, and making sure that we don't end up with some sort of analysis paralysis or worse, a report that gets filed away somewhere?
Amy: I love this concept because I truly think of data as not just science, but also art. And the best practitioners and the best organizations are. Using data to drive action, but not data for the sake of data , which is, which is honestly what can be very tempting as a talent analytics team, it can be very tempting to just kind of keep digging and digging and digging and digging into the data.
And to be honest, a lot of times executives will exacerbate that because the people stuff is hard and it can be uncomfortable. And so, for example, I've been in many meetings and you've probably seen a two gym where there might be this sort of like glaring low point in the data and say that it's something we need to work on related to belonging.
It's much easier for an executive team to say, 'Hey, why don't you go cut that data about 10 different ways because I want to see whether it's coming from this place or this place.' And 'what about this? Have we actually looked at how that's changed over time?'
Jim: Sounds like an avoidance strategy.
Amy: Exactly.
And it's not that they're not good questions and I think often our sort of first reaction in HR is like, oh, yay, they're paying attention to this. Like, let's go give them more data. But I think the art of it is saying, okay, well, we can do all of those things, but we clearly have something we need to work on here.
And so let's actually start talking about what that means and what that feels like and how do we wanna be different When you start to to see that like analysis paralysis could be coming and when you feel it as a practitioner too, you know? Often you do wanna go get all of that data and it can take some time to really get to that sweet spot.
It's often a lot of work on the backend to analyze the data and then to find just the right amount to bring to executives. And I'll say on the flip side of that, one of the things I think that's so important is not to. I've heard this term hold the data hostage as a people analytics team or as an HR team.
Very often that's kind of what we do is we, we keep it and we just, we don't give access to managers. We don't give access to the C-suite. We just, we present it to them in this perfect form, but that often does sort of create this impression of the leadership team of like, oh, this is HRS data and they're gonna tell me what to do, and I'm gonna tell them what more data to pull.
I don't necessarily own it. They own it. And so I think there's another great strategy is to just give all those leaders access to their reports.
The point is to get in there and plan it yourself. Go read the comments. Yes, go look at it. And that engagement, I think, can really change the dialogue.
That's where I think the real magic happens is when everyone feels a real ownership of the data and, and motivated to do something with it.
Jim: Yeah. And one of the things that, we really, we pioneered at Glint was changing the focus of who has the data, right? Historically it was, the execs had the data, the company was responsible for employee engagement, and we had a very different mindset that, every manager and every employer can play an important role in employee engagement.
So one of the issues a lot of managers are facing is we're all new managers when it comes to navigating hybrid work, remote work, the new world of work.
Is there anything in particular that you're seeing managers do to be effective in navigating this new world of distributed and hybrid work?
Amy: Yeah, I think there are some practices that, and mindsets that, that the best managers are adopting. One is, I would say, to let go of control.
The reality is that each employee on your team has very different needs, lots of dynamics at play. And so, empower everybody on the team to get involved in building connection in a, in a remote or hybrid team, in helping help them to feel like they can own, creating a, a safe place for people to talk about an important topic or a fun you know, question of the day that they might post on whi Skipper example to get people talking
So I think just really letting. Building culture in a hybrid world, like really letting that be a, a ground up, a bottom up approach where everyone can feel empowered to own the culture. I think that's really important. It can't all lie on the manager. Another thing I would say is, just really being okay with not knowing the answers. we don't know exactly how to do this thing well, and I think in this culture we are always so afraid to admit that like we think that we're supposed to know it all and have all the answers, but leaning into vulnerability is just such an important part of management.
I think admitting that can help more people feel ownership over this really tricky new dynamic that we're all. Living in. Yeah, it's gonna be really interesting to see how we sort this out over the next few years.
Jim: One of the other topics that I know you're really, really passionate about is feelings at work.
And I'm really passionate about this too, and I think we share the belief that, sort of being happy at work. Is about embracing the full range of feelings and emotions that can show up whether they're sort of joyful and positive feelings, or whether there's some disappointment or sadness or anger.
Just to name a few, can you talk a little bit about your experience around feeling the full range of emotions at work, and why is this topic even important?
Amy: I love it.
I have felt throughout time that often when we use the word happy, we get some resistance in a couple different directions. You either have the people who are like, well, happiness is a personal choice, or it's a treat, and it's not my job as a leader to make my people happy.
You also have this something that I think has really surfaced in the last couple of years, especially with the hardships that we've seen and the pandemic and natural disasters and social injustice where people are saying, there's this concept of toxic positivity, too much of a focus on happiness.
And when I think about what does it really mean to be happy at work, it isn't about, always being positive and always being bubbly and making sure that everybody feels good all the time. So the goal of happiness at work is not to feel happy all the time. The goal is to feel that full spectrum is what allows us to really appreciate the true happiness when we have it.
Jim: You know, we have a couple of values at at at Wisq. One of them is authenticity and one of them is positivity. And from time to time, people will ask like, well, what if I'm not feeling positive?
Well, then I say, then always be authentic. You can't always be positive, but you can always be authentic and acknowledge what you're feeling.
Amy: Yes, I remember, I think Gotham, one of your co-founders who's so brilliant, I remember him talking about positivity as well, and that it's realizing that every challenge is an opportunity to learn.
It's like, instead of what is happening to me, it's like, what is happening for me? I remember you saying at one point, and it, I remember it stopped me in my tracks of, you know, when things feel really hard, it's what's, what is the universe trying to teach me right now?
And so, the positive part for me is not, oh, this is all great. It's leaning into the opportunity that every challenge presents us, and that to me is really where that positivity and authenticity come together and where the real magic happens.
Jim: Yeah. One of our other guests Diana Chapman, she's one of the creators of Conscious Leadership Group, and what she said was, she said, emotions are intelligent.
And what she meant was that when they're reflected on, they often offer valuable insights. And when you think about that, how do you essentially channel those negative emotions to, as you said figure out what the universe wants you to learn at that moment?
Amy: The, the thing I think about the most when I think about. Emotions are intelligence. is the concept of tears or crying at work.
I grew up with this message of you cannot cry at. You cannot bring tears into work that will show that you're weak, that will show that you don't have it together. And I really felt a lot of... I'm a crier Jim.
I feel a lot. And it comes out in the form of tears. And I've always felt some shame about that, especially, in the workplace. And when I had this shift in realizing. To Diana's point, like these tiers are actually data. This is intelligence.
This is me being human. This is a clue to my body that something really matters. When I started thinking of it that way, I realized that. That I should not be trying to turn that off. That is actually, that means that I've got something really charging for me that can, that can be really powerful and can help me to, to do better in the work that I'm trying to do, to have a better relationship at work, to communicate something that's hard with my leader.
And so I have really, and you, I think were a big part of, of my journey in really embracing that. Because I remember the first time that I cried in front of you. I was so embarrassed. I was thinking, oh, well this might be my last one-on-one with Jim, because I just totally freak him out, and this is it.
Like I remember thinking that as my tears were running down and my face was hot and red and all of the things, and I will never forget what you said as I was thinking all of these thoughts, you said, you paused for a minute and you said, where does it hurt? What's going on? And I just remember, I mean, it, it hit me like a ton of bricks because you actually leaned into this emotion.
You didn't. Lean away from it. you actually asked me questions about it,
it changed everything for me because I realized if Jim Barn. Says it's okay to cry. I've been like, I need to pass that along, and it really is okay. That was really big for me, and I, I do find, especially in my role, that a lot of times tears come up in conversations that people have with me.
And when I can say, everyone always apologizes for it, that's the first thing they do. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm gonna cry. Or, oh my gosh, I need to cry. Right? How many times have you heard it? And yeah. Wait, don't apologize. You know, tears are data. This means that it means something to you. And actually, one of the, the hacks that I do now is when I'm gonna talk to my boss, or if I'm gonna talk to somebody, and I know I have a lot of passion about it, whether it be, it could be anger, it could be fear, it could be, it's actually, interestingly enough, tears for me are not usually sadness, they're usually a, a whole range of the other emotions, disappointment, or surprise.
I'll actually stay up front to the leader. I just want you to know I'm probably gonna cry when we have this conversation, and I, I want you to know that I'm okay, and I don't want you to be afraid of that. It's because it really matters to me, and I have found that by saying that upfront, it helps the person that I'm gonna talk to it.
And it also kind of just changes the dynamic and some of those norms around like, I don't want you to think this is not okay, or some of the things that you might be thinking and you don't need to, to fix this or solve it or make me, help me to stop crying. This is actually me being human. And I think it's part of what makes me better and what makes this really important to talk about.
Jim: Wow, that is so, so powerful. What a, what a gift to our listeners permission to feel. I love that. Thank you for sharing that.
Amy: Well, thank you.
Jim: One last question. My favorite question. So what's one thing that you personally do Just promote your own happiness, either at work or outside of work?
Amy: one thing that I do every year is I have an, an affirmation or a mantra, and it's something that I will, I have a, I do five minutes of journaling every morning and every night, and I write it every day as, as a reminder This year's mantra has really been working for me. So I'll share, I'll share what it is.
It was inspired by a quote from Peter Haggerty, which is, life is a journey and if you fall in love with the journey, you'll be in love forever. And something about that really hit me, I think in part because I'm at a, a stage in parenting where my kids are, having a hard time, and I can't always just, you know, research or, or like muscle my way to, to fix it all.
And so every morning I write, I'm in love with the journey of life. And I, think about every time it feels hard, I, I remind myself this is actually part of the journey and I kind of try to take a playful approach to the fact that this might feel uncomfortable is actually part of, part of that learning.
So I wouldn't say I'm great at this gym, let's be honest. I am not at Jim Barnett levels of feeling all the feelings. But this approach of like, thinking of this as actually part of the design and part of the journey has helped me to kind of breathe through it and get comfortable with the uncomfortable and know that, that it's all part of the plan.
Jim: Well, thank you so much for sharing your journey with me and with our listeners today.
Amy: This was really terrific. Thanks Jim. I love the opportunity to talk about these great topics and thanks for creating this, this platform to talk about happiness at work.
