Richard Bran­son

A ques­tion that new en­tre­pre­neurs of­ten ask me is: how should I treat my staff?

They want their em­ploy­ees to be hap­py and pro­duc­tive, but don't know how to achieve that bal­ance. How much re­spon­si­bil­i­ty do they ac­tu­al­ly have for work­ers' phys­i­cal and men­tal health? What sort of perks do they need to of­fer in or­der to at­tract and re­tain the best peo­ple?

In re­cent years some com­pa­nies have tried in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es to an­swer­ing these ques­tions, tak­ing ad­van­tage of ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy and changes in our so­ci­ety. Many younger peo­ple, for in­stance, like to have flex­i­bil­i­ty in where they work, so some busi­ness­es of­fer em­ploy­ees the abil­i­ty to work from home. Oth­er busi­ness­es, like Zap­pos, have thrown out their en­tire or­ga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture, along with the job ti­tles!

At Vir­gin, we've tak­en two big steps over the past cou­ple of years: we now of­fer em­ploy­ees at our head of­fices un­lim­it­ed an­nu­al leave and flex­i­ble work sched­ules. Our teams have re­spond­ed with en­thu­si­asm. If the ex­per­i­ment con­tin­ues to work well, I'm sure many oth­er com­pa­nies both in­side and out­side of Vir­gin will fol­low suit.

The poli­cies al­so high­light some­thing that we at Vir­gin have all been dis­cussing for some time: the im­por­tance of em­ploy­ees' well-be­ing. Our pas­sion­ate and var­ied de­bates about em­ploy­ers' re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in this area prompt­ed us to fo­cus our next Vir­gin Dis­rup­tors fo­rum on the sub­ject, "Your Work­place Well-Be­ing: At What Cost?"

The val­ue of mea­sur­ing well-be­ing, even be­yond busi­ness, was summed up nice­ly by a pan­elist who will be join­ing me at our de­bate lat­er this month.

Jim Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, re­cent­ly point­ed out on our Dis­rup­tors blog that the one of the few signs that the Arab spring was about to hap­pen a few years ago could be found in da­ta about well-be­ing that was mea­sured in Tunisia and Egypt.

While gross do­mes­tic prod­uct in both coun­tries looked healthy be­tween 2008 and 2010, dis­con­tent was bub­bling un­der the sur­face. "Just about every­one in the world thought those coun­tries were fine," Clifton wrote. "But no one saw that well-be­ing was crash­ing in both so­ci­eties. Well-be­ing met­rics for na­tions and cities and or­gan­i­sa­tions will be­come as or more im­por­tant than tra­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic mea­sures, such as GDP or com­pa­ny stock prices, with­in two decades; sim­ply be­cause they pre­dict bet­ter."

So what steps should en­tre­pre­neurs and man­agers take to im­prove em­ploy­ees' well-be­ing at their com­pa­nies?

Every com­pa­ny and its staff is lit­tle dif­fer­ent, so I don't want to sug­gest a one-size-fits-all so­lu­tion. The ba­sis of the best ini­tia­tives is to treat peo­ple with re­spect and give them more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

My pri­ma­ry tip: be bold. Don't be afraid to try new things; just let your team know what you're do­ing. Then get feed­back from your staff, and if a pol­i­cy doesn't work, it's OK to re­verse it or make changes. You're look­ing for so­lu­tions that work for every­one in the com­pa­ny. While it's true that you can't please every­one all of the time, giv­ing peo­ple choic­es, rather than a rigid set of rules to fol­low, will en­sure a feel­ing of em­pow­er­ment across teams.

And re­mem­ber to em­brace your em­ploy­ees' in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty. Their fam­i­ly com­mit­ments, ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, dif­fer­ent health re­quire­ments and oth­er as­pects of their per­son­al lives shouldn't be viewed as bag­gage. Af­ter all, suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies have di­verse staffs.

I have to say that it's been in­ter­est­ing to see how one of our newest busi­ness­es, Vir­gin Ho­tels, has shaped its well­ness pro­gramme. Since they're based in Chica­go, a city that's very cul­tur­al­ly di­verse, they have had a lot of bases to cov­er.

Here are just some of the steps the team has tak­en to en­sure that every ho­tel em­ploy­ee is hap­py on the job: of­fer­ing healthy food op­tions for staff, pro­vid­ing yo­ga class­es in the ho­tel, set­ting up a soft­ball league, spon­sor­ing Eng­lish-lan­guage class­es for those who don't speak it as a first lan­guage and mak­ing a se­ri­ous com­mit­ment to men­tal well-be­ing.

Above all, keep in mind that a busi­ness is a col­lec­tion of peo­ple. If your peo­ple are not hap­py and healthy, then your en­ter­prise's prog­no­sis isn't good ei­ther. But if you make sure they have the time and sup­port they need, you'll set them and your com­pa­ny up for suc­cess in the long term.

(The next Vir­gin Dis­rup­tors de­bate will take place on April 23. Watch live on Vir­gin.com at 3 pm East­ern time.)

(Richard Bran­son is the founder of the Vir­gin Group and com­pa­nies such as Vir­gin At­lantic, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca, Vir­gin Mo­bile and Vir­gin Ac­tive. He main­tains a blog at www.vir­gin.com/richard-bran­son/blog. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter at twit­ter.com/richard­bran­son. To learn more about the Vir­gin Group: www.vir­gin.com.)

(Ques­tions from read­ers will be an­swered in fu­ture columns. Please send them to Richard­Bran­son@ny­times.com. Please in­clude your name, coun­try, e-mail ad­dress and the name of the Web site or pub­li­ca­tion where you read the col­umn.)

Op­tion­al lis­ti­cle

How to keep your staff hap­py, healthy and pro­duc­tive

Here's how to find poli­cies that suit your em­ploy­ees:

�2 Ex­per­i­ment: Don't be afraid to try new ideas and al­ways keep your team in­formed about what you're do­ing.

�2 Try, try again: If a pol­i­cy mis­fires, don't give up. It's OK to make changes or scrap it and try some­thing new.

�2 Ask for opin­ions: Get feed­back from your staff and be sure to find so­lu­tions that work for every­one in the busi­ness.

�2 Choic­es are key: No, you can­not please every­one all of the time. But giv­ing peo­ple choic­es, rather than a rigid set of rules to fol­low, will make them feel em­pow­ered.