Basic concept of C4E – Cost for Emotion
Emotions determine our everyday life – both in private life and in business.
Everyone who likes going to work knows that work is performed more easily when you are in a good mood. Which impact do emotions have on productivity? What profit can be achieved by investing in the good emotions of your employees? C4E provides answers to these questions! We have known for a long time that things run much better if good humor is the prevailing mood in a company. How can the economic impact on planned measures that is generated by emotions be calculated?
The environmental balance and sustainability are also further perspectives for the evaluation of business activities and their long-term success. Employee satisfaction and attractiveness for newcomers are strongly emotionally influenced factors that become more and more important every day in terms of profit. The emotional balance is a complex structure of all emotionally driven factors. It determines the value of the company from the perspective of the people in the company.
World-renowned companies rely on the feel-good factor of their employees. Generations of human resource managers keep repeating like a litany that well-treated staff creates benefits. Just as long as entrepreneurs consider money spent on incentives and bonuses a waste.
But it is clear to all: good mood = good business!
bad mood = bad business!
Entire economic forecasts are based on this vague principle (IFO-Index). For more than three decades, motivation psychologists have explored on coherences between emotion, reward and performance. We have incorporated our experience into a complex algorithm that mathematically calculates these relationships.
We distinguish between two perspectives:
1.) The private perspective of the individual and his emotional balance.
and
2.) The entrepreneurial perspective of a company whose success is influenced by the emotions of its employees and, thus, directly affects the productivity.
The lines of questioning are similar for both perspectives, however, the weighting and logical linking differ when calculating the results. The individual’s perspective is expressed as emotional balance, the operating result is expressed as productivity.
Our concept takes into consideration ten different areas:
1. Appreciation
In the area of appreciation, we investigate how much employees are satisfied with the appreciation they receive. In this context, appreciation does not only entail the monthly salary and other financial benefits such as holiday or Christmas bonuses, but also the appreciative feedback and the way of daily dealing with employees‘ concerns. An interesting example is the payment of employees in the automotive industry: although they perform similar work, they are paid very differently by different manufacturers. The wage gaps are compensated by the image of the employer, i.e. employees working in less prestigious companies have to be compensated by higher wages.
2. Time
In the area of time, we investigate how employees deal with their available time. In this context, not only the ratio between free and paid time plays an important role, but also the opportunity to improve and develop or to be able to influence working times. A trend seems to be emerging that the so-called "work-life balance" is no longer as relevant as it has been in the past decade. Today, an optimal place of employment seems to be one of an employee by vocation. An employee who finds fulfillment during paid working time is not bothered by too little time for compensating hobbies. More and more people no longer distinguish between work and leisure, but want to combine work, leisure and life altogether. This applies both to the wanderlust of a young newcomer, as well as to the desire to spend more time with the family without having to put up with losses in the job.
3. Quality
In the area of quality, we investigate the relationship between training and tasks and reflect the results in the model. It is important that an employee is placed in the right position, feels comfortable and is sufficiently trained to fulfill the requirements. Both, training opportunities as well as own demands regarding the quality of work are included.
4. Identity
Identity is a key area to determine the emotional balance of an employee. This is not only about how the company’s brand is perceived, but also about the identification with the company’s goals. In addition, the acceptance of the employer in the employee’s private environment is important. A company’s tasks and responsibilities assumed in a social context are becoming an important factor for the well-being of an employee.
5. Team orientation
Team orientation is a research area that is becoming increasingly important worldwide. An individual’s high performance becomes really effective only in teams. It is clear that teams cannot replace an individual’s high performance, but only the team composition can enable outstanding performances.
6. Leadership
In the area of leadership, we measure the impact of leadership work. It is particularly important that leaders make use of all the various capabilities and talents of their employees and pay attention to their emotional coherences. If employees complain about their company while still enjoying to perform their work, this always has to do with their immediate superior. Leaders play a key role regarding a sustainable effect of changes. This role is closely examined in this area with specific focus on the costs for emotion.
7. Sustainability
In the area of sustainability, we measure an employee’s assessment with regard to the sustainable use of his resources in the company. In this context, we focus on three key resources: finance, employee and environment. Additionally, we ask questions with a view to how suppliers and customers assess the company's future.
8. Economic success
In the area of economic success, we address an employee‘s assessment of the company‘s success in relation to its economic efficiency. An important element of this question is the involvement of the employee in the success of the company and we focus on questions on how satisfied an employee is with his degree of involvement.
9. Participation
In the area of participation, we measure how strongly employees participate in entrepreneurial decisions. Does an indirect participation exist via institutional bodies or does the company have a culture of participation which regularly captures the sensitivities, ideas and opinions of its employees?
10. Customers
The area of customers deals with the frequency of customer contacts of an employee as well as his general proximity to customers. We also address the relevance of customer decisions to an employee’s fate and future in the company.