The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Year: 2016

  • Want to be happy at work in 2016? Ask yourself these 10 simple questions.

    2016

    The beginning of a new year is a great time to take stock of your work life. Were you happy or unhappy at work? What would you like to change?

    It’s important to evaluate because how you feel at work has such a large influence on you at work AND at home. When you’re happy at work, you have better job performance and more career success. You also have better health and a happier private life.

    Unfortunately most people look back and think exclusively in terms of what went wrong. The things they should have done. They goals they ought to have achieved. The progress that didn’t come.

    We gain much of our happiness at work (and in life) by appreciating the good things we have and do. Sure, you should also make sure to improve your circumstances and address any problems but it is just as important to be able to appreciate the things that do work.

    This is hard. Negativity bias is one of the most well-established psychological phenomena and it means quite simply that our minds devote more mental focus and cognition to the bad than the good. Our thoughts automatically go to problems, annoyances, threats and fears but remembering and appreciating the good in our lives takes effort and focus.

    We think you can achieve much more by turning that around 180 degrees, so here’s our suggestion for a little new year’s exercise in happiness at work.

    Think back at your work life in 2015 and answer the following 10 questions. It works best, if you take some time to do it and if you write down your answers:

    1. What went really well for you at work in 2015?
    2. What did you do that you were proud of?
    3. Who did you make a difference for at work?
    4. What new skills have you learned professionally?
    5. How have you grown and developed personally at work?
    6. Who has helped you out at work in 2015?
    7. Who have you admired professionally?
    8. Which 5 things from your work life in 2015 would you like more of in 2016?
    9. Which 5 things from your work life in 2015 would you like less of in 2016?
    10. What will you specifically do to become happier at work in 2016?

    Most people think that they must work hard to become successful – and that success will make them happy. They’re most likely wrong.

    So this year, make happiness at work your #1 career goal – because being happy at work will make you more successful in your career.

    I wish you a very happy new year at work!

  • How Toyota Gothenburg moved to a 30-hour workweek and boosted profits and customer satisfaction

    The video has English subtitles. If you don’t see them, press the  subtitles button in the video.

    Could a 30-hour workweek work?

    It not only could, for the mechanics at Toyota Center in Gothenburg Sweden it has worked incredibly well for over 10 years, leading to happier employees, happier customers and higher growth and profits.

    In this short 13-minute speech, CEO Martin Banck of Toyota Center Gothenburg explains why they made the transition from a 40-hour workweek to 30 and what the results have been.

    One outcome: Their mechanics now get more work done in 30 hours a week, than other mechanics do in 40. Not only is productivity higher (which you would certainly expect), their actual total output is higher!

    In fact, several workplaces in Sweden are now trying it out, including hospitals and nursing homes.

    I fully realize that many people are going to dismiss this out of hand. They are stuck in the cult of overwork and totally committed to the idea that working more hours always means getting more work done, even though the research shows that permanent overwork leads to poor health and low performance.

    It seems counter-intuitive that you could work fewer hours and get more done, but here’s another example:

    One executive, Doug Strain, the vice chairman of ESI, a computer company in Portland Oregon, saw the link between reduced hours for some and more jobs for others. At a 1990 focus group for CEOs and managers, he volunteered the following story:

    When demand for a product is down, normally a company fires some people and makes the rest work twice as hard. So we put it to a vote of everyone in the plant. We asked them what they wanted to do: layoffs for some workers or thirty-two-hour workweeks for everyone. They thought about it and decided they’d rather hold the team together. So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down – executives too.

    But Strain discovered two surprises.

    First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!

    Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.

    We need to fundamentally change how we think about time in the workplace and Toyota Gothenburg is a great example to learn from.

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