Making people happy is such a radical idea that it’s a sad thing to see when people are seeking help on how to be more decent to humans. That’s why delivering happiness is not business as usual. I’ve previously written about how Zappos has designed their business model around the idea of ‘delivering happiness’. Yet there’s still a lot of doubt around this ‘radical’ concept, see this Forbes article that asks: is employee happiness a corporate responsibility?

When I see questions such as these I cringe. Well of course it is! Seriously, why would anybody want to work at a place that makes them unhappy? I understand answering this questions is a lot more complicated because it deals with human nature, but it really doesn’t have to be. Grab a pen and paper, an important idea is coming up…

A recent Fast Company article backs this up. According to a study by David Rand of Harvard: People who spend time with happy people are more likely to become happy themselves.

Think about that for a second. Is that something too complex to understand? Do we really need this type of research to understand something so human? No. We don’t really need this type of research to know that hanging out with happy people will makes us more happy. Or that making unhappy people happy makes us happier. It’s common sense!

And that’s not all. Even more telling is that sadness is twice as infectious as happiness. No surprise here either, as an unhappy customer is more likely to tell five people how much your product or services sucks as opposed to telling just one. And by the way, this also includes your employees. Their part of the equation too.

With so much at stake, why can’t we get our heads around that happiness is actually simple?

Here’s the problem: Organizations have a lot of ‘business sense’ but not a lot of ‘common sense’.

Simply understanding that happiness and sadness are contagious should be enough for any organization to treat their people and their customers with decency. Would you rather be know for spreading sadness than happiness? Didn’t think so!

The BIG idea is very simple then: make people happy. Why? Because if your employees are are happy then your customers will be happy. It’s a win-win scenario. Everyone is happy and it all originated from you. That’s what people will remember, trust me