Why Companies Want Staffers with Happy Spouses
By Rachel Feintzeig
More firms are making efforts to please workers’ spouses, reports The Wall Street Journal, as happy relationships at home help workers avoid distractions and stay productive.
Happy wife, happy life – even at the office?
Todd Pedersen, chief executive of home-automation company Vivint Inc., says there’s a connection between the state of his employees’ relationships and their productivity levels.
“When my wife’s sad, I am not coming to work with a bounce in my step,” he says.
Vivint and a handful of other companies have been launching special clubs and planning events —part professional development, part party –to acquaint employees’ husbands and wives with the work that consumes their partners’ days. Gatherings give spouses space to vent, and, companies hope, help them understand the next time their partner is stuck late at the office or leaving town on a last-minute business trip.
An unhappy partner can make the other partner less effective on the job, research findings suggest. A study published in the October issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family found
() that men are happier with their lives when their wives are satisfied with the state of their union, regardless of the husbands’ feelings about the marriage. And a recent study in Psychological Science showed that a spouse’s personality can influence his or her partner’s performance at work (). .
Employees whose spouses are conscientious types who tend be organized rule-followers were more likely to perform better at work, win promotions and raises and be happy with their jobs, according to the study’s author, Joshua Jackson, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. That effect remained even after the researchers accounted for the workers’ personalities. The paper drew on five years of data from 2,272 couples in Australia.
Videogame maker Riot Games Inc. teaches employees’ partners to play its games during monthly events for significant others. In addition, the company has a private Facebook group for significant others to connect. Members talk about their current struggles and what the company can do to help them, according to Sue-Min Koh, a talent programs manager at Riot Games.
Pedersen estimates Vivint spends about $100,000 per year on workshops for spouses of sales staff and technicians, which make up 60% of the company’s employees. Last March, the company treated about 400 partners, all women, to a day of motivational speakers, games and prizes at a conference center in Utah near Vivint’s headquarters. Some found cozy blankets under their seats; others chatted about the frustrations that come with having a spouse who works long hours.
On occasion, husbands have dropped in on the gatherings, but the focus of the spouses’ program, called Elevate, is decidedly female; its website is “elevatewife.blogspot.com,” and most of the company’s technicians and sales staff are men.
“They really feel like we’re at least trying to listen,” Mr. Pedersen said.
Andrea Taylor, the wife of a sales manager with the company, plans the events. She said the events have made her more supportive of her husband’s schedule, which includes 80-hour work weeks during the summers and frequent travel.
At DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc. managers are trying to get spouses talking like employees do.
The company, which provides services for patients with kidney disease and manages medical groups, communicates in a “weird language,” according to Dave Hoerman, a vice president who runs DaVita University, which provides training for employees. The company recently held a session for employees’ spouses and adult children. During one Friday in August, 38 family members learned about everything from conflict resolution to the “one for all and all for one” slogan that DaVita workers frequently chant.
“At the end of the day, they were doing the [chant] back,” Mr. Hoerman said. The company plans to host more sessions next year.
“The overwhelming response was, ‘Now I get why my spouse works so hard here,’” Mr. Hoerman said.