Company leaders have long claimed that people are their greatest asset. Yet many still design work as if employees were just one of many operational inputs, leaving their greatest assets feeling dissatisfied and unmotivated. Companies have become masters at understanding their customers. They map customer journeys, study their behaviors, and use predictive analytics to anticipate their needs with astonishing precision. But when it comes to understanding their employees—the very people who create those customer experiences—most organizations still rely on intuition, surface-level data, or generic, infrequent surveys.

Closing this gap is both possible and powerful. We witnessed this firsthand at a clothing retailer with hundreds of stores across North America that had kicked off a transformation focused on customer experience. Leadership knew that frontline employees would ultimately make or break the efforts to improve customer and store outcomes, and they sensed that motivation, satisfaction, and joy were critical pieces of the puzzle. But they struggled with how to understand and act on employee needs at scale across hundreds of stores.

Our team—co-led by Debbie and Hubert and comprising BCG consultants and HBS students—was given unfettered access to the workforce: More than 90% of the retailer’s employees participated in a survey that explored career motivations, perceived effectiveness, task-by-task enjoyment, satisfaction, and how their time was spent across daily work tasks. We paired this detailed and large-scale employee data with our own observations from dozens of in-store interviews and visits. And unlike most employee sentiment survey data, we were able to link individual responses directly to that employee’s and associated store’s operational, customer, and financial outcomes.

These analytics were built on tools that apply customer insight methodologies to employees. Using statistical tournaments and segmentation methods typically used with customers, we identified meaningful differences across employees: distinct attitudinal segments, each with unique characteristics, needs, and performance outcomes. For the first time, leaders could see deeper into their employees’ minds—not just what they said was important, but what actually drove their motivation and actions. And, importantly, they could link them to specific outcome metrics of retention, sales per hour, customer satisfaction, and more.

Here’s what our study revealed about employee joy and performance, as well as how the retailer’s leaders took action to boost joy at work.

How Employee Joy Drives Performance

To measure joy, we asked, “Do you enjoy your work?” We like this question because it’s intuitive and easy to answer, but also flexible in that what drives joy at work can be different for every person.

A clear theme emerged from the analysis: Employee joy at work is a performance engine. Employees who reported the highest levels of joy were dramatically more motivated and far less likely to be looking for another job. This is critical in retail environments where turnover can top 60% a year. Employees who enjoyed their work had sales per hour 25% higher across multiple years. Stores with more high-joy employees also delivered better customer experience, reflected in higher NPS and CSAT scores. Joy, it turned out, had fingerprints all over the outcomes leaders cared most about.

Read the full article here.