We all understand that happy employees are significant for their productivity. In the end, they contribute to company success as well. Recent HR tools noted this fact, and built something to help employee retention.
This is the case for David Niu, a serial entrepreneur, who later founded TINYpulse. “At minimum, retention is crucial because it’s expensive to replace good employees. You lose institutional knowledge, and there’s so much downtime training a new employee. It’s just common sense for a business to want to keep good employees happy, to make sure they don’t quit,” said David Niu.
David Niu believes it is crucial for any companies to pay extra attention for employee retention. “But focusing on retention is also part of an overall positive company culture, and that kind of culture becomes a feedback loop of retention. Positivity and happiness are drivers of success!” he claims.
The Useful TINYpulse
As an entrepreneur, it is normal for Niu to offer a solution. He established TINYpulse, an HR tool, in 2012 with the aim to make happier employees. The tool is becoming more popular as Asia also enjoyed its product while they are not specifically targeting companies in Asia.
TINYpulse is web-based, so any business in any country with an Internet connection can sign up and be a user in a matter of minutes. “We have a dedicated staff of account managers who work at all hours to enroll new clients around the world and help them succeed with our tool.” Niu states.
Their mission is to “Make employees happier” regardless of where they reside. Of course, there is a huge population in Asia that can also benefit just like employees in North America, South America, Europe, and Australia benefit.
“For me, managing people has been a joy, but also maddening at times. Nothing gives me greater joy than watching – and nurturing – employees succeed beyond expectations. But the biggest downer is seeing the opposite; it’s having a valuable employee quit out of the blue. If real estate is all about ‘location, location, location,” then business is all about ‘people, people, people.’” said Niu.
See: Science Claims Happy Employees are More Productive
TINYpulse & Asia
According to an interview with TINYpulse team, they claimed that they have a number of clients across the continent, from India to South Korea. “They have all either come to us organically or through an existing client relations. It is because their leaders are interested in increasing engagement and retention.”
Based in the U.S., TINYpulse’s values are actually universal. They believe open communication, happiness and honest, hard work are the fundamentals of any successful workplace, whether in Canada or Cambodia.
Asia is also special from their founder’s perspective. Before founding the company, David Niu traveled around the world interviewing CEOs about their companies, about how they grew positive work cultures. Niu interviewed CEOs in China, South Korea and Vietnam, and they all had systems in place to improve engagement and retention. Niu drew from their wisdom when he founded TINYpulse.
Furthermore, David Niu wrote in his book “Careercation” about one small problem he observed while visiting Shanghai. “Retention is a huge problem for business owners. During Chinese New Year, the country practically shuts down as people return to their hometowns. All these entrepreneurs worry their staff won’t return after the New Year,” told Niu.
Niu observed that employees who quit over the Chinese New Year often don’t give two weeks’ notice, which employees in the west do as standard practice. TINYpulse might be able to bridge that gap for employers in Asia, probing why a worker would choose to vacate a job with no notice.
Hence, Asia is the right market for TINYpulse, since every company in every country needs a happy, productive workforce to succeed. Indeed, entrepreneurship is huge in Asia right now; it seems like everyone has the ability to start their own business. But entrepreneurs, no matter how successful, will encounter growing pains, which makes TINYpulse so useful.
See also: Happy Employees, But Not Costly
