Why being happy at work matters
This post is a draft chapter of the book about happiness at work I wrote right here on the blog. The book is called:
Happy Hour is 9 to 5 -
How to Love Your Job,
Love Your Life and
Kick Butt at Work
I finished the book and it came out in December, so this page is now less relevant. I'm leaving it here, to preserve some of the process that led to the book.
Click here if you want to read the finished book. It's available free online and you can buy it on paper or as an e-book.
Here is the original post:
Patricia, an outgoing, engaging, perpetually smiling woman in her early 30′s with a shock of unruly, prematurely grey hair, was really happy to get her first management job. She’d been a secretary, back-office worker and all-round administrative worker previously, but as purchasing manager for a major producer of food additives. she looked forward to really streamlining their purchasing procedures.
The hiring had gone smoothly. The company needed the position filled quickly and a former colleague of Patricia who now worked there had recommended her. Everything looked great: Nice offices in a wood-land setting: Check! Interesting responsibilities: Check! Nice colleagues: Check! A good salary: Absolutely!
But as Patricia started on her new job, things turned out to be less idyllic. The mood at the company was very much one of competition rather than collaboration. Her immediate manager was rarely there and never appreciated or even commented on the work she or her colleagues did. In fact nobody seemed to care what anybody else did, it was “You do your job, I’ll do mine.”
She was doing her job, and doing it very well, but she got no recognition and though she tried to change the mood in her department it was very difficult for the latest newcomer to change old, established ways and cultures.
As the months passed by, Patricia started to look forward less and less to each work day. It became a struggle to get out the door in the morning. She also lost a lot of energy outside of work. She found herself exercising less. She went out less and wathced TV more.
After 7 months on the job Patricia decided to quit. She hadn’t been looking for a new job, she simply decided to go in and quit.
Immediately, the people close to Patricia noticed a difference: Where before she had been tired and a little sad, she was now happy, silly, energetic. Every day that passed after her decision to quit brought her back to herself in huge steps.
What surprised Patricia, and scared her more than a little, was that she hadn’t noticed how her job had really affected her, because that change had come very gradually over the span of months. But after her decision to quit she took the opposite journey in a couple of weeks, and suddenly it became clear just how much an unpleasant work environment had affected her both on and off the job.
Patricia used her re-discovered energy to become an aerobics instructor and now teaches three times a week. She is currently looking for her next job, and has vowed only to take it if it’ll make her happy.
Why, oh why
It always pays to ask the most important of all questions: “Why?”, in this case “Why does happiness at work matter? Does it matter at all, or could we all just go to work, be unhappy, get our paychecks and be happy in our free time?”
The answer is clear: Not only does happiness at work matter, it is the major force that determines whether a person or a business will be successful. Not only is happiness a factor – it’s the major factor.
I’m not going to spend too many pages on Why, because I’m anxious to get to How, but I do want to lay out the reasons why happiness is so important. There are two areas where happiness at work matters:
- For people – because work is becoming more and more central to people’s lives
- For businesses – because happy companies consistently outperform unhappy companies
Let’s look at each of these.
Positive Sharing » First parts of the happy at work book Said,
June 23, 2006 @ 10:59 am
[...] I could’ve started at the beginning with the introduction and the chapter on “What is happiness at work” but I always feel that establishing why a topic matters is key, so that’s where I began. Why happiness at work matters Why happiness at work matter to people [...]
Steve Farber Said,
June 24, 2006 @ 4:59 am
I say amen to your whole point of view! Your writing is snappy and engaging, and I look forward to seeing the book unfold.
kareem Said,
June 24, 2006 @ 7:32 pm
Depends on your desired audience, but it might make sense to spend more time on the Why.
If you want to preach to the converted, by all means spend time on the How!
But if you want to convince ppl that Happiness at Work leads to healthier businesses (the larger market IMHO, and the one that is more important to bring over to the good side) then I think you should lay out a more thorough case for the Why. There are a lot of assumptions in the Why that ppl like us take for granted or understand because of reading GE Durham, Semler, Gratzon, Pink, Rushkoff, etc…
Eagerly looking forward to the rest of the book!
Alexander Kjerulf Said,
June 29, 2006 @ 2:03 pm
Kareem: Thanks for the tip – I agree, and I went ahead and fleshed out the Why-chapter some more.
Steve: Thank you very much for the kind words.
JACH Said,
July 4, 2006 @ 7:12 pm
I don’t know if this experience can help you or not (english is not my native language, so feel free to correct it =)
—-
This is a personal experience from yesterday.
We were “invited” to a meeting. It resulted that the meeting was about one “new” thing they want to implement: an Order and Clean commiteé. This intent is doomed to fail, and this is why:
1.- One of the first said in the meeting was: “most of the photos [of the mess] are from your department”. There was a photo of a bunch of cables and another of boxes below a desk. This was ultimately outrageous because the cables were part of an electronic test-in-progress (and there isn’t a thing like “wireless oscilloscope), and the boxes were in the desk of the package-designer!
2.- At one point, one of the top managers in the plant came into the meeting room and said “pay attention, because your department is the messiest”. Grumped a few more words and left. Our appartment isn’t the messiest, but even if it were, this attitude just made everyone defensive and gloomy.
The people in my department joke all the time and try to ignore the constant attacks of this “self called” manager (I’m new here, so this was “my first”), but I can notice that this attitude is filtering down. Not only people in my department but in other departments are starting to blame others, being non cooperative, complaining about everything and ultimatelly, looking for another place to work.
Today one of my colleages told me: “This orden and clean commiteé won’t last a month”. I already knew that, and I wondered what would happen if things would been ask differently.
JACH Said,
July 4, 2006 @ 11:14 pm
The moral of the story is that bad management makes people “unwilling to” accept any suggestion, policy, etc, even if it is a good one.
Alexander Said,
July 7, 2006 @ 8:17 am
JACH: Man that sucks. To met it looked more like the way you’d treat a small child who refused to clean up his room than the way you’d treat grown-up professionals.
And I think you’re exactly right that when good ideas are launched badly, they have a very small chance of getting off the ground.
And hey: So what if you’re department is messy? If it works for you, and you get results, they should just butt out. Some people work better in slightly messy conditions.
Does happiness at Prosper matter? « My Discoveries on the Road to Prosper and Learn Said,
August 10, 2008 @ 2:35 am
[...] Why being happy at work matters- Alexander Kjerulf- June 23, 2006 @ 10:31 am · Filed under Happy At Work, Happy at work book-on – From his Positive Sharing Blog [...]