Linda and Robin (authors of the excellent book The Power of Nice) just blogged about niceness in managers, and their post is one of those bad-news-good-news deals. First the bad news. They write that:

Some scientific studies suggest that being in a position of authority has a unique effect on the human brain, that can cause people to become less sympathetic to the emotions and concerns of others—and as history has shown us, this can have a devastating effect on a business’ bottom line.

I agree completely. There are two unfortunate factors working against niceness in management:

1: Many organizations don’t see niceness as a success factor in managers.
When they promote people to management positions, they may pick people who are professional, experienced, assertive, etc. Studies also show, that they tend to pick people who are taller than average and have good hair. Seriously.

In fact, being nice can actually hinder your career prospects. Just think of the old saw that “Nice guys finish last.”

2: Being given authority can actually make a person less nice.
Bob Sutton wrote about this in The No Asshole Rule:

One of the simplest and yet most fascinating experiments to test the thesis is the “cookie crumbles” experiment. Researchers placed college students in groups of three and gave them an artificial assignment — collaboration on a short policy paper about a social issue. They then randomly assigned one of the students to evaluate the other two for points that would affect their ability to win a cash bonus. Having set up this artificial power hierarchy, researchers then casually brought to working trios plates containing five cookies.

They found that not only did the disinhibited “powerful” students eat more than their share of the cookies, they were more likely to chew with their mouths open and to scatter crumbs over the table.

Fortunately, there’s good news too in Linda’s and Robin’s post.

In order for NICE guys who made it to the top to avoid falling victim to the power paradox, all they need to do is flex their NICE muscles, daily.

They go on to give some specific actions that managers can take to stay nice. Go read their post, it’s excellent.

And of course I hardly have to add that nice managers are essential to happiness at work. They’re much more likely to be happy themselves, much more likely to have happy employees and hence are much more successful.

Your take

Is niceness a trait you want to see in your boss? Who’s the nicest boss you’ve ever had? What did he or she do that worked? What did that do to you and your colleagues? Please write a comment, I’d love to know your take.

Related posts

• A letter from your new boss.
• How do you deal with a bad boss?
• How can companies hire happy managers?
• Why do some people like bad bosses?

Dan’s point is that rewarding performance mostly doesn’t work and often leads to worse performance.

For tasks that are simple and straight-forward and require no creativity or cognitive skills, extrinsic motivation works fine and promising people rewards for good performance increases performance.

But as soon as a task requires even rudimentary cognitive skills, performance decreases if you offer performance rewards. And the larger the reward, the worse the performance.

Related posts

• Why pizza doesn’t motivate
• How leaders motivate – or not
• The big hoax

The article opens with this:

Fernando Flores was Chile’s minister of finance — and, later, a political prisoner. Now he teaches companies how to use assessments and commitments to transform the way they do business. The outcome: executives who speak and act with intention.

That’s all well and good. But then comes this description from a session Flores runs with a management team from a global construction company:

The session has only started and already Flores has had enough. He lifts his 6-foot, 220-pound frame from his chair. Imagine a bear rising up on its hind legs: The men are simply not prepared for how big Flores is when he stands — or how fierce. He turns on Tomas, a relative newcomer to Flores’s sessions.

“Tomas,” Flores begins, “tell me: Why is change taking so long here?” Tomas responds: The group is resisting Flores’s approach. To Flores, Tomas’s answer sounds like projection. It is Tomas who is resisting change. Flores invites Tomas’s colleagues to “assess” Tomas. One executive leaps to the challenge. “Tomas, you are blind, egotistical, and inwardly focused,” he says. “I can’t challenge you without your getting defensive.”

The words leave Tomas stunned. “Tomas,” Flores says, “say, ‘Thank you for that assessment.’ ” The words are part of a script written on an easel next to Flores. Tomas tries to repeat them, but he stutters when he gets to the word “sincerity,” even though the rest of his English is nearly perfect. Flores prompts Tomas, “Follow the script, exactly as it is written”
…
“Tomas,” Flores says, “why this rebel-child attitude? Can’t you answer me?” Flores turns away in disgust. Another colleague uses the script to assess Tomas. “Tomas,” he begins, “you are a bureaucrat. You are married to rules, not to listening.” In fact, Tomas keeps his head down, scribbling notes, unable to look at his colleagues. Flores asks Tomas what he learned from this comment.

“That I have more work to do,” Tomas whispers.

Flores eyes the group warily. “I am using Tomas for one purpose,” he says, “to show you what transformation is not. To show you what it means to be weak and insincere.”

Yikes!

I don’t know what’s worse – the awful methods Flores employs; the fawning tone in the Fast Company article, which makes him sound like a corporate superhero swooping in to save business in trouble; or the fact that he charges companies millions of dollars for his assistance.

To me, this is one of the most disgusting business practices I’ve ever heard of. I’m all for honesty and openness but that is obviously NOT what Flores is preaching. As the first comment on the article says, his methods are sociopathic:

I have visited seminars sponsored by Flores, in Chile, and have known, rather well, several people who were “disciples” of Flores.

Listening to him he struck me as rude, manipulative, AND SOCIOPATHIC. I worked with one person who, presumably, was one of Flores main students, and the guy was, like Flores, rude, insensitive, overbearing, and most importantly ineffective. He actually ruined a business in which I was involved. His partners dumped him.

There are many things wrong with Flores’ methods – here are the top 5 reasons why I hate what he does.

1: It does NOT create commitment and open communication
Flores calls his approach commitment management. According to the Fast Company article, his aim is to teach managers:

to master “speech acts”: language rituals that build trust between colleagues and customers, word practices that open your eyes to new possibilities.

Riiiiiight!

There are proven ways of generating positive, constructive openness in groups – ways that encourage open feedback, receptive listening and mutual support and learning. What Flores does is pretty much the exact opposite.

2: It makes people unhappy and frustrated
I’ve seen the results of these methods myself. I once visited a customer site for a sales meeting – and during the meeting, while we were discussing something completely innocuous, one of the customers broke down crying. Turns out she’d recently attended a similar seminar where co-workers were encouraged to criticise each other harshly and the results had been devastating for her and the team.

3: All disagreement is labeled as weakness or obstruction
You can see for yourself what happens to Tomas above, when he shows the slighted sign of dissent from Flores’ abusive methods: He is ridiculed and made a target for further attention.

This is in fact a tactic used in many cults (e.g. Scientology) where all dissent is punished in similar ways.

If you have legitimate questions and concerns about the process you should be allowed to voice them, not automatically be labeled as “weak and insincere” as Tomas is.

4: It rewards the wrong people and the wrong behavior
Flores’ methods reward two kinds of people: Those who actively enjoy being jerks and those who are too weak to say no. That can’t possibly be good for an organization.

5: It doesn’t work!!!
And here’s the ironic part: It doesn’t even work! The reader who told me about Flores used to work at a company that used his services, and the result was internal warfare on a scale that made all their best people defect to their competitors. Essentially, it put the company in a weakened state, from which it has not yet recovered.

I’m not alone in being aghast at Fernando Flores and his methods. I told some other business bloggers I admire about him and here are some reactions.

Steve Roesler over at All Things Workplace says:

Buying into any activity that tears people down, demeans, and disrespects them in the name of “honesty” shows a lack of wisdom and discernment at best and, at worst, a willingness to trade off the health and well-being of employees for a promise of quick results. If you haven’t yet been exposed to these tactics masquerading as “development”, be alert. In difficult times humans are especially susceptible to promises of deliverance.

Here’s a quick and easy test.

Let’s say your mother decides to stop by and cook dinner for you and your spouse. It was made with love but really wasn’t all that tasty. So you show her how enlightened you are in order to create an even closer, more trusting relationship that will help you truly bond:

“Well, Mom, you have no skills…and you are fu_ _ed up when you leave here.”

I didn’t think you would.

Kareem Mayan adds:

What a joke. Telling people bluntly and rudely what you think about them is not a gift or an invention. It’s another fad preached by a “rockstar guru” that promises results to sub-par managers if you follow the One True Way.

If you want your co-workers to improve, honesty is important. But being an asshole has been proven to be an ineffective management strategy. So why even bother beating this drum? 21st century companies focus on outcomes, connections, people, and creativity.

Your take

What do you think of this? Have you ever been subject to something similar? What would you do if someone tried to treat you in this way? Write a comment!

Related posts

• Top 5 Business Maxims that Need to Go
• Put Your Employees First
• How to Lose Your Fear of Being Fired
• How to Handle a Bad Boss

A couple of weeks ago I was writing my regular op-ed piece on leadership for a major Danish newspaper and I was plumb out if ideas. It’s funny how your creativity can get stuck when you’re looking at an empty word document and a looming deadline :o)

So I asked for ideas in my twitter feed (follow me on twitter) and got tons of input, of which the email I got from Joe D. Calhoun, Director of Business Development at Paraco Gas Corporation was by far the coolest.

Here is Joe’s email in full – read and enjoy, it’s excellent!

When it comes to leadership … we have all been told leaders are born, not made, that leadership is about ego, nice guys finish last. BUNK …. Leadership is all about happiness. Seeking a means to find the greatest good for the greatest number of people. If you’re happy and your know it … share it … find a way to lead others to it … nice guys DO finish first.

Leadership is also NOT about a title or a job or position. I have had jobs that were very low on the totem pole of life and yet I was looked up to for my leadership of taking on a task and seeing it through to completion … all the while doing it with my “excessively happy” style. Volunteerism is leadership of the happiest sort. A labor of love … working for free (and I have been doing a lot of that lately as I have been un-employed) and supporting a cause – sometimes one that is not sexy and glamorous. This year I helped an organization plan, solicit donations, decorate, facilitate live and silent auctions, all to raise $20,000 for the treatment of drug and alcohol additions. I loved it … Leadership is love.

Leadership takes energy … do you know any energetic people that are not happy? Energy to face the challenges of anything with a smile on your face and find new ways of solving problems.

Ask most leaders … they will tell you … they feel “called” to lead. Every calling has an innermost happiness associated with it. I recently accepted a job offer … I knew 30 minutes into the interview that I would take the job … it felt right in my gut. I felt like I was supposed to be doing this. This sense of calling came while discussing the opportunity and the company. I had prepared three pages of notes for the interview … questions … things I thought I wanted to discuss. Instead we talked about the industry … laughed and I read the plan they had for expansion of the department. I was the right peg for the hole … I knew it … they knew it. Leadership is having a calling and answering it … and that feeling in your gut is ultimately tied to “how happy will this make me?”

That’s a nice little manifesto for leadership right there! Click here for more cool thoughts from Joe.

Your take

What do you think – are leaders born or made? Does your boss have your happiness in mind? Is there any room for love in your workplace?

Relatede posts

• A not from the boss
• Top 5 business maxims that need to go
• How to deal with a bad boss
• The Happiness at Work Manifesto

Here’s a nice little piece from abc news that shows just how happy this company is:

MAN, that’s good to see :o)

Here are my top three reasons to love zappos.

1: They have a culture that promotes happiness at work

Zappos is committed to defining and living a positive, happy culture. Their values are:
1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

That’s your recipe for happiness right there.

2: They pay new employees to quit

At the end of your training as a new Zappos employee, the company offers you $2000 if you quit right away. This means that the people who stay are committed to the company and the culture.

Here’s an interview where Bill Taylor (formerly of Fast Company) talks about it.

3: They behave like human beings. Great human beings

The fact that people are happy at work (yes, even the ones answering the phone) means that they give incredibly good customer service.

And often that service goes above and beyond. I dare you to read this story and not shed a tear.

The upshot

Zappos gets it, as do more and more companies. When a business puts its people first (not the customer and not the investors, but the people) you increase happiness, creativity, productivity and profits.

This is not rocket science – and companies like Google, Southwest Airlines, SAS Insititute, Disney, Pixar and many many others will testify to the fact that it works.

So how does your company prioiritize? Are employees at the top of the list – or is that spot taken by profits, growth, customers, or..?

The money quote:

After I left the consulting business, in a reversal of the usual order of things, I decided to check out the management literature…

As I plowed through tomes on competitive strategy, business process re-engineering, and the like, not once did I catch myself thinking, Damn! If only I had known this sooner! Instead, I found myself thinking things I never thought I’d think, like, I’d rather be reading Heidegger! It was a disturbing experience. It thickened the mystery around the question that had nagged me from the start of my business career: Why does management education exist?

The article gives us the most thorough deconstruction of the whole field of management and the magical, unscientific thinking behind it.

I’m currently writing my second book which will be about keeping an organization happy during a crisis and one of the case stories I’ll be using is so good, that I just had to share it here.

The story is quite long, but it shows very clearly that there are better ways to handle a financial crisis than layoffs and panic. Enjoy!

The economy may be bad, but Wim Roelandts isn’t really bothered much by that because, as he told me, this is his 8th. recession so far.

Wim’s worst crisis as a leader came in 2000 when Xilinx, a computer chip manufacturer based in  Silicon Valley, got hit hard and fast by the dot-com crisis. In the December 2000 quarter their revenue was $450 million – 9 months later, their revenues for the September 2001 quarter was down to only $225 million.

Something had to be done, and fast, but what? Wim Roelandts, an affable Belgian who is usually seen with a smile on his face, was the CEO back then and was clearly facing some tough decisions. And while Xilinx’ closest competitors wasted little time in firing a large percentage of their staff to cut costs, Wim felt here had to be a better way.

He came up with a plan for his organization and the 2.800 people in it and called it “Share the pain”.

The plan had three simple components.

1: Cut salaries, not jobs

Wim felt strongly that if they laid off people now, they’d just need to rehire them 5 or 6 quarters later when business improved. Couldn’t there be a way to keep people on even during the crisis?

So they instituted a pay cut that was progressive and voluntary.

Progressive meant that your pay cut depended on your salary – the higher your salary, the higher your pay cut. These were some typical pay cuts:

Job	Pay cut
Production-level employees	0%
Junior-level engineers	6%
Senior engineers and middle managers	9%
Directors	12%
Vice Presidents	15%
CEOs (that’s Wim!)	20%

So while production employees were not affected at all, Wim himself took the largest pay cut – 20% of his salary.

They might have given everyone a 10% pay cut, but chose this way because it shares the pain – not the pay cut. When you’re a production-level employee with a salary of around $30.000-40.000 trying to live in the Silicon Valley area, a 5% or 10% pay cut could really damage your quality of life. When you’re a VP, 15% is entirely survivable.

Secondly the pay cut was voluntary. This wasn’t part of the original plan but it turned out that Xilinx employees in Europe would have to agree to take the pay cut voluntarily, so Wim decided to make it voluntary for everyone.

Amazingly, every one of the 2.800 employees chose to take the pay cut – except one. And no, that one person was not singled out for reprisals of any kind. Voluntary means voluntary. Thinking back to this entire time, the one thing that Wim is the most proud of, is that everyone agreed to the pay cut in order to save their co-worker’s jobs.

Later in the process, when the pay cuts turned out not to be enough to keep the company profitable, they introduced more measures, like closing the company for one day every other week and the option of taking a paid leave of absence to take an education.

Though Wim was very careful never to promise that there would be no lay-offs, this plan meant that Xilinx got through the crisis without laying off one single, solitary employee.

2: Communicate openly

Wim knew that honest communication was essential. His motto was to “keep communicating and force his management team to communicate.”

In practice, he organized meetings with his entire management staff and the managers below them as well. He knew, that when employees had questions, they wouldn’t come to him or the VP’s, they would come to the managers closest to them, so it was important that they knew what was happening and remained optimistic.

This is not easy, as Wim readily admits. “I didn’t know any more than anybody else what was coming and so the tendency is to close your office door and don’t talk to anybody because if you talk with someone, they can ask questions that you don’t know the answers to.

But that’s actually the wrong thing to do, you have to get out there. You have to talk with people and even more important you have to force your management to get out and talk, talk to people, tell them when you don’t know but also tell them all the things you know and good friend to give people some hope that things will get better soon.”

In these sessions with the managers, Wim would go over the company’s situation honestly and thoroughly and then they would discuss how to communicate this to the employees. Typical topics of discussion were:

• What can we do as managers?

• What do we say?

• How do we act?

A key aspect of these meetings was also to listen to the middle managers, so they felt good about the company’s situation and could pass that feeling on to their people.

3: Involve employees in decisions

They involved people in all new initatives by consulting on focus groups of employees. They’d get 20 employees together, tell them about what they were planning to do and get their honest feedback.

One specific decision that came out of these focus groups concerned new employees. Originally, the company had planned not to include them in the pay cuts. When this was tested, the new employees protested – they wanted to be treated like everyone else and “share the pain” too.

An intended byproduct of the focus group sessions was that information about the crisis and how it was being handled spread quickly throughout the organization. When the initatives were announced to the employees, most people had heard about them already, which created more trust.

That was his plan for the organization, but there was another equally important aspect: Himself!

On a purely personal level, Wim did three things to handle the crisis. First, he did his best to be positive. Yes, the very survival of the company was at stake, but he still had to believe that there was a way out.

Wim put it like this: “You have to be positive yourself. If you are negative and you come in the factory everybody’s going to be looking at you and getting depressed. So however bad it is, however sad you feel, however worried you are, you come to work in the morning and you put on a big smile and you feel optimistic and you exude optimism and positive thinking.

When you are the CEO and you see the numbers go down every week or every day, it’s very easy to become depressed yourself and you really have to find the inner strength.”

Secondly, he saw the crisis not only as a threat but also as an opportunity. This has become something of a stale and ridiculed cliché (the next time some tells me, “We don’t have problems, we have challenges,” I may punch them) but Wim saw this crisis as a chance to get creative and try something new. To him, creativity and innovation shouldn’t just be applied to creating new and exciting products but also to leadership – to find new and exciting management solutions.

And thirdly, Wim saw this as a chance to prove that there is indeed a better way to handle a crisis than the tried-and-stale ones. He wanted to show the world, that this can be handled differently. “I’m gonna show them” may not be the noblest motivation, but it’s not uncommon. All the leaders I interviewed for this book expressed the same desire to “show them!”

Now make no mistake, Wim faced a lot of resistance to his approach. He had heated discussions with some board members, who wanted to know why he didn’t just lay off 10% of the employees when everyone else in the industry was doing it. The same arguments came from outside the organization from financial analysts, who also would have been much more comfortable with the traditional approach.

Time proved Wim right and the result of this creative approach to crisis leadership was amazing. The results were:

• Profitability - Except for the second quarter of 2001, when there was an inventory write down, Xilinx was profitable every quarter of that recession.

• Customer satisfaction - Xilinx kept the same people in sales so the customers saw the same people they were used to talking to.

• Market share - Xilix gained 15 point of the market share during the crisis. Because they kept their people they could keep momentum.

• Product development - They had time and people to keep developing new products – essential in their high-tech industry.

• Recruitment and training savings - After three quarters the market started to improve. Because Xilinx had kept their people, they did not have to spend a ton of money hiring and training new people.

• Motivation and happiness at work – This showed employees that they were truly valued. Not just on paper and in good times, but also in a down-turn.

Of course it had a huge positive effect on the employees’ motivation and happiness at work.

At first employees were skeptical, seeing it as a cheap trick. “Yeah, you say you’re not doing lay-offs, but it’s just a matter of time,” was a common attitude. But as many other companies in the area had mass lay-offs and Xilinx employees saw friends losing their jobs and having to sell their houses they started to come around. During that time Xilinx participated in the Fortune Magazine 100 best places to work and came in the top 10 – in the middle of the company’s worst crisis ever.

The effect was also felt outside the company. One day, about two years after the crisis when Xilinx was back on track, Wim was just arriving at the office when he was approached by a female employee who happened to arrive at the same time.

She told him “My husband got laid off and so yesterday evening we had a family meeting with the children. We had to tell them that their father had been laid off and that they had to do some savings and we had to be very careful how we spend money, to make sure that we get through this tough time until our dad finds a job again.”

And she says “One of my children asked but mom what is going to happen if you get laid off” and she said “I was so proud to say that I work at Xilinx and Xilinx doesn’t lay off people.”

Southwest Airlines gets it. Their priority is:

1. Employees
2. Customers
3. Shareholders.

This is the way it has to be.

My favorite quote from her talk:

“The most important priority that we have is our employees… I spend 85% of my time on employees and on delievering proactive customer service to our employees… They in turn spend their life trying to assure that the secondmost important customer to us, ie. the passenger feels good.”

Imagine it’s your first day in a new job. You sit down at your desk for the first time, and waiting for you there is a note from your new boss.

In the note your boss bids you a warm welcome to the company, and then says this:

1: My most important priority is your happiness and productivity at work. If there’s anything I can do to make you happier and more efficient – tell me right away. This isn’t idealism, it’s good business, because happy people are more productive.

2: I will not burden you with endless rules and regulations. You’re an adult – I trust you to use your best judgment.

3: You have my full permission to screw up, as long as you own up to it, apologize to those affected and learn from it.

4: Please tell me when I screw up so I can apologize and learn from it.

5: Please make sure to hunt down people who do great work and praise them for it. I will do this as much as humanly possible, but I can’t do it alone.

6: If I get it right occasionally, I’d love to hear about it from you, too :o)

7: I will always have time for you. My calendar will never be so full that my next free time to talk to you is three weeks from next Friday.

8: I want to know about you as an employee AND as a human being. I DO care about your private life, about your and your family’s health and well-being.

9: Life is more than work. If you’re regularly working overtime, you’re just making yourself less happy and more stressed. Don’t join the cult of overwork – it’s bad for you and the company.

10: I expect you to take responsibility for your own well-being at work. If you can do something today to make yourself, a co-worker or me a little happier at work – do it!

This post was inspired by Michael Wade’s post over at ExecuPundit called Note from boss to employees. I liked his tips but I found the tone of them a little defensive. Michael’s tips had an undercurrent of “business is hard and being a leader is tough but we can slog it out together.”

I disagree – work is great fun (or at least it could and should be).

How would you like a note like this from your new boss?

Related posts

• Top 5 business maxims that need to go.
• Performance reviews are a big fat waste of time.
• The radical company.

I’m currently working to finish the first draft of my second book. In the mean time, please enjoy this guest post by Karl Staib.

One free paid day

Small companies are best positioned to offer the “one free paid fun day” perk. Let’s say you have ten employees and they receive three weeks off a year and they make an average of $45,000. You can add an extra day off and spending cash of $50 to each employee. This is a minimal investment of time-off and money for the amount of return received.

This investment will pay dividends because your company is willing to do more than the minimum to make its employees happy. When you give back to your employees they will give back to you. It’s what humans do. Smile at to someone and see if they can resist smiling back at you. They usually can’t because they understand the social cues that make a successful society.

The society that your company creates will determine the quality of work your company will get out of the staff. Let’s break down the numbers to see how realistic it is to implement the “one free paid fun day” perk.

Time-off

If you do give your employees one extra day off each year you’ll be adding 4.76% to their percentage of time off given, if they receive three weeks a year. Let’s say they average 250 working days a year; the company is giving up 0.40% of a working year. That’s less than half of 1%. It’s not a lot of time if you look at it over the whole year.

Pay

If you pay them $50 to go and have fun for that day you are only increasing their pay by 10% of 1%. It would only be 0.11% if they averaged a $45,000 salary in a year. That’s not much when viewed at from a whole year’s wages.

Overall

The big picture is most important. What will happen if your company gives a “one free paid fun day?” Your employees will tell their families and friends and they will probably inquire if there are any openings. Everyone likes working at a place where other people also want to work. There is a reason why good companies keep bringing in quality talent. They make sure that the employees’ friends know about the great perks of the company. If 60% of new hires are referrals, it means most of the hiring comes from friends and co-worker suggestions and this happens because the company is making sure that the work environment stays enjoyable.

Happy employees, as we all know, perform better. Giving a perk that doesn’t require much money or effort can separate you from the rest of your competition. Every company wants their good reputation to spread throughout the industry through word of mouth.

Here’s the Kicker

Each employee must give you a short report, no more than 300 words, about what they did. This is so you can learn more about your employees and what makes them happy. If they took their kids to the local amusement park then you may be able to raffle off free tickets at the company Christmas party. If they volunteered at the local recycling center then you may want to send out a survey to implement more green tactics. You may also want to put them in charge of saving the environment and the company money by conserving and recycling.

People want to work for a company that they feel has good values; they want to feel proud to tell people about where they work. I would imagine that not many people are proud to work for Phillip Morris, not because it’s a bad work environment, but because of the damage that cigarettes do to people’s lives.

Employees at Google wear their Google gear with pride. Friends are always asking them what it’s like to work there and if they can get them a job. Google works hard at work happiness because they understand the long-term effects that it has on the company’s bottom line.

It’s up to your company to figure out a plan that will have your employees telling their friends about the great company that they work at. You should start small. Implementing a “one free paid fun day” is a great way to learn more about the staff and separate yourself from the competition.

Do you think your company would ever implement a “one free paid fun day?”

Karl Staib writes about unlocking and kicking open the door to working happy at his own blog Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this article, you may like to subscribe to his feed or read one of his most popular articles, The Five Most Important Things You Need to Know About Working Happy and 7 Tips to Process Your Stress Faster.