Comments on: What makes people happy or unhappy at work

By: M.A.K

M.A.K — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:30:40 +0000

when i typed in Google Search “what makes employees happy” i never thought i’ll get something!
it really surprised me & highlited somepoints that is really interested.

thanks for the wonderfull subject,,,

By: Personeelslog » Blog Archive » 10 tips om medewerkers weg te jagen

Personeelslog » Blog Archive » 10 tips om medewerkers weg te jagen — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 15:10:45 +0000

[...] Slecht management is de meest effectieve manier om medewerkers weg te jagen. Dat blijkt uit een mini-onderzoekje van The Chief Happiness Officer. [...]

By: Great comments

Great comments — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:05:17 +0000

[...] Tanuki reports on happiness at work in Japan: Conformity and obedience are ingrained in the culture and reinforced through the education system focused on mindless repetition, so they just don’t know any better. What it gives you is a team of mindless, uncreative and unhappy drones – contrary to the stereotype, Japanese workers are one of the least productive and effective ones I have ever seen, and this coming from an eastern European like me is saying something ;) [...]

By: tanuki

tanuki — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:13:32 +0000

Yes, it really is pretty bad. I\’m not sure about more \”progressive\” companies (IT industry comes to mind) or western ones as I have no experience working in either, but most traditional Japanese firms operate like that.

Young people don&t really \”put up\” with it per se – conformity and obedience are ingrained in the culture and reinforced through the education system focused on mindless repetition, so they just don&t know any better.

What it gives you is a team of mindless, uncreative and unhappy drones – contrary to the stereotype, Japanese workers are one of the least productive and effective ones I have ever seen, and this coming from an eastern European like me is saying something ;)

To a westerner like me the situation is horrible, bordering on ridiculous. One example I like to cite in discussions like this is that many people in my office work longer than ATM machines (in Japan many ATMs do not operate 24/7) – somehow soulless boxes need more free time than living people…

By: tanuki

tanuki — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:05:42 +0000

Whoops, that\’s what you get for not double-checking your post before clicking the button – how did that \”do\” get in the first sentence? And why are all my apostrophes and quotation marks preceeded by a slash (or is that one backslash? I can never remember which is which). Oh well, that\’ll teach me to be more careful in the future :)

By: Alexander Kjerulf

Alexander Kjerulf — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:04:44 +0000

I gotta say, it sounds bad. Is it like that everywhere, or are some companies changing? Is it the same in western companies operating in Japan? Do young people starting work really put up with this?

By: tanuki

tanuki — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:59:17 +0000

Unfortunately I have no idea what list do they subscribe to – the page we get when we try to surf to a blocked site is totally non-descriptive. Even looking at it\’s source code reveals nothing, except opened tags and poor structure. Another funny thing – you know what other site was labeled as chat and blocked last week? solutionwatch.com :/

Anyway, it would be great if you came here and did some lectures on happiness at work. Too bad no one would even invite you – in my company the general atmosphere is that if you\’re happy and relaxed at work you\’re doing something wrong, possibly slacking and you should immediately start telling everyone how busy and tired you are and perhaps stay in the office for another five or six hours…

It\’s good that I\’m just an English teacher there so I can disregard most of the unwritten rules and happily read your blog in an act of defiance ;)

By: Alexander

Alexander — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 08:45:20 +0000

Thanks for the tip Tanuki – and good to see you here in spite of the block :o) Do you know what blocking service they use?

And thanks for the info on the japanese work culture – do you think I should come over there and teach japanese managers a little happiness?

By: Tanuki

Tanuki — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:22:35 +0000

Hi, speaking of making people at work (un)happy – I work for a very, very large company in Japan and today during lunchbreak I noticed their filtering software started blocking your blog – it tells me it\’s \”Chat\” and I can\’t access it. Of course it doesn\’t block any free proxies, such as the one I\’m using now.

The whole situation is just sad and ironic. Oh well, in japanese companies it doesn\’t matter if your happy or not anyway. Hell, it doesn\’t matter if you actually are productive or not either – all that matters is the amount of time spent in the office. Unpaid semi-mandatory overtime? You betcha!

By: mel

mel — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:13:22 +0000

Thank you for the nice compliment on my site, Alexander.