3 Reasons We Love MailChimp’s Employee Happiness Ambassador Role

We love looking to other companies for inspiration when it comes to company values, building culture, and basically anything related to creating great places to work. And once in awhile, we’re so impressed we can’t help but share it with our readers. Previously on the blog, we have admired Valve for their amazing employee handbook and Hubspot for their killer culture code. Today, we want to pay homage to MailChimp.

There are a lot of reasons to love MailChimp and what they’ve made of their Atlanta-based company (besides their well-positioned podcast sponsorships). For starters, it’s impossible not to know they’re from Atlanta. MailChimp is a big part of the Atlanta community and has made an effort to make it an integral part of their company culture. They’ve proven time and time again that they genuinely care about their community.

Another reason to love MailChimp is their custom-made profit-sharing programs. MailChimp is privately owned and doesn’t offer traditional stock options. However, they’ve created unique profit-sharing programs that give employees serious incentives—like one that gives employees a bonus up to 19 percent of their annual salary put towards their 401K!

Employee Happiness Ambassador

Put a different way, MailChimp is serious about making their people happy. And this brings us to what we want to talk about today: MailChimp’s Employee Happiness Ambassador role. Here are three things we love about this unique position they created in 2014:

1. It cuts to the heart of what HR should always be doing. At the end of the day, HR’s main goal is to make sure that their people are happy. Not only does calling oneself a happiness ambassador remind HR of their important duty, but it informs everyone else in the company that they’re here to help and that they care about employee well-being—their real life well-being. Sure, the happiness ambassador role entails a lot of seemingly trivial tasks like ordering cakes, organizing company parties and socials, and providing snacks, but each of those activities is designed to lift up employees—not merely satiate their cravings for food or fun.

2. It frees employees to find their own version of job happiness. MailChimp’s Employee Happiness Ambassador, Ashley Wilson, understands that you can’t force employees to be happy, but by focusing on “connecting, engaging, and empowering people in a culture of learning and discovery” you give them the tools they need to find it. And more times than not, if you give people a reason to care, they will. MailChimp is living proof of that. Through their many activities centered around uplifting their community, they are giving their people a sense of purpose—something employees nowadays desire more than previous generations.

3. It addresses the bottom line. Really, it does. And it’s pretty obvious why that is. A happy, engaged employee is going to perform so much better than those who are only one of the two—or neither. It’s kind of a rising tides thing. Or rather, let’s have MailChimp’s current Employee Happiness Ambassador sum up the effects of her role perfectly:

“Making opportunities for everyone here at MailChimp to cut loose, feel appreciated, and use their talents to help make Atlanta great is just another way we invest in people. Happy chimps do better work, which makes for a better MailChimp—which helps customers do better work, too.” —Ashley Wilson

We pandas couldn’t agree more, Ashley. Here’s to focusing on employee happiness and all the good that comes from it!