Category: Happy At Work

Imagine you’re in a job interview and everything is looking great – the job looks interesting, the salary and perks are about right, people seem nice.

What you really need to know now is, “Is this a nice place to work?” Are people happy at work here? Are the managers good? Are the co-workers nice? Or is this company a branch office of one of the nastier levels of hell?

You could always ask them straight out at the interview. “Say… I was wondering… Is this a good place to work?”

But you pretty much know what they’ll say, don’t you? “Why certainly, dear applicant, this company is fully committed to the well-being of its employees. We strive to maintain a high level of employee satisfaction and employees are our number one asset.”

Riiiight!

So what questions can you ask to cut through the corporate b.s. and learn whether this is an actual, honest-to-god, nice workplace?

Here’s what you can do: Ask the people interviewing you about their best experiences working for the company. Questions like:

• What’s been your best experience working at this company?
• When do you have the most fun at work ?
• Who do you enjoy working with the most here? What do you like about them?
• Which manager do you admire the most in this company? What do you admire about that person?
• What’s the greatest thing your manager has done for his/her people?

You can ask the person interviewing you. If your future boss is at the interview, ask her. An even better option, if at all possible, is to get a chance to ask some of your potential co-workers. Some companies make this possible, and that’s the best way to learn more about the company.

What’s so great about those questions?

1. Because you’re asking about people’s own experiences, these questions are hard to dodge or to answer with platitudes and corporate flim-flam.
2. These are all positive questions. Even if the person interviewing you is a serial complainer, you will get some information on what’s great about this company.
3. If they think these questions are just waaaay off base and inappropriate, that’s probably a good sign that they’re not into the whole “happy at work” thing :o)
4. Answering positive questions like these puts people in a good mood, which means they’re more likely to like you and consequently more likely to hire you.

Care to try it?

Let me come clean here: I’ve only been to two job interviews in my life – both at the very beginning of my career! I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 15 years, so I have never tried to use them in this way myself.

However, I have used the same type of questions in sales meetings (which are not too different from job interviews when you think about it), where they work very well.

These questions will give you a much better idea of what a company and its people are really like. If good stories and great experiences start flowing and the word “fun” comes up a lot, that’s an indication of a great workplace.

If they look at you like “That’s the weirdest question I’ve ever heard” it may not be.

So: What do you think? Would it work for you? Have you done something like this already? Write a comment!

Related:

• How to find a job you’ll love
• How to lose your fear of being fired
• Never stay in a bad job! Fix it or leave!

Lisa was falling behind at work. Every morning she woke up nervous about the workday ahead of her. Every evening she went home thinking of all the tasks she hadn’t gotten around to.

Lisa is a 35-year old engineer and project manager at a Danish IT company. With business booming, keeping up had become a struggle – she felt she had to run really fast, to just to stay in place.

With her in-box overflowing and people all around her clamoring for assistance on their projects, she started to look at various productivity tools and systems and quickly settled on the one she’d use. As is typical for Lisa, once she’s decided to do something, she does it, and with new ways of tracking time, improved todo-lists and prioritizing her work, she did notice that she was getting more work done.

But she still felt, that she could be more productive. While she was thinking about her next step, it struck her: Some of what she did, she hated doing.

While she generally enjoyed her job, especially helping people plan their projects and advising them on the best ways to move forward, some of her tasks were administrative in nature. Tracking progress, updating various statics, generating reports, etc… . They didn’t take up that much of her time – but they were a lot less fun. Let’s face it: to Lisa, they were boring as hell.

She talked to her boss about it, and they decided to give those tasks to a project secretary. This freed up a little time for Lisa, but mostly it allowed her to work on those parts of her job that she really liked. Consequently Lisa became a lot happier at work – and THAT’S when her productivity sky-rocketed. Now she had the energy to connect with her people and the creativity to think up and implement new ideas. Instead of feeling stressed and harried, she was optimistic and positive.

While her productivity system had definitely helped her get more done, the productivity boost she got from being happy at work was many times bigger. Lisa is now working way less hours – and getting much more done. And most importantly, she’s enjoying work a lot more!

If you want to get more done at work, the productivity gurus out there will tell you that it’s all about having the right system. You need to prioritize your tasks, you must keep detailed logs of how you spend your time, todo-lists are of course essential, you must learn to structure your calendar and much, much more.

But that’s not where you should start. You should start by liking what you do.

The single most efficient way to increase your productivity is to be happy at work. No system, tool or methodology in the world can beat the productivity boost you get from really, really enjoying your work.

I’m not knocking all the traditional productivity advice out there – it’s not that it’s bad or deficient. It’s just that when you apply it in a job that basically doesn’t make you happy, you’re trying to fix something at a surface level when the problem goes much deeper.

Here are the 10 most important reasons why happiness at work is the #1 productivity booster.

1: Happy people work better with others
Happy people are a lot more fun to be around and consequently have better relations at work. This translates into:

• Better teamwork with your colleagues
• Better employee relations if you’re a manager
• More satisfied customers if you’re in a service job
• Improved sales if you’re a sales person

2: Happy people are more creative
If your productivity depends on being able to come up with new ideas, you need to be happy at work. Check out the research of Teresa Amabile for proof. She says:

If people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas that day, as well as the next day, even if we take into account their mood that next day.

There seems to be a cognitive process that gets set up when people are feeling good that leads to more flexible, fluent, and original thinking, and there’s actually a carryover, an incubation effect, to the next day.

3: Happy people fix problems instead of complaining about them
When you don’t like your job, every molehill looks like a mountain. It becomes difficult to fix any problem without agonizing over it or complaining about it first. When you’re happy at work and you run into a snafu – you just fix it.

4: Happy people have more energy
Happy people have more energy and are therefore more efficient at everything they do.

5: Happy people are more optimistic
Happy people have a more positive, optimistic outlook, and as research shows (particularly Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology), optimists are way more successful and productive. It’s the old saying “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right” all over again.

6: Happy people are way more motivated
Low motivation means low productivity, and the only sustainable, reliable way to be motivated at work is to be happy and like what you do. I wrote about this in a previous post called Why “motivation by pizza” doesn’t work.

7: Happy people get sick less often
Getting sick is a productivity killer and if you don’t like your job you’re more prone to contract a long list of diseases including ulcers, cancer and diabetes. You’re also more prone to workplace stress and burnout.

One study assessed the impact of job strain on the health of 21,290 female nurses in the US and found that the women most at risk of ill health were those who didn’t like their jobs. The impact on their health was a great as that associated with smoking and sedentary lifestyles (source).

8: Happy people learn faster
When you’re happy and relaxed, you’re much more open to learning new things at work and thereby increasing your productivity.

9: Happy people worry less about making mistakes – and consequently make fewer mistakes
When you’re happy at work the occasional mistake doesn’t bother you much. You pick yourself up, learn from it and move on. You also don’t mind admitting to others that you screwed up – you simply take responsibility, apologize and fix it. This relaxed attitude means that less mistakes are made, and that you’re more likely to learn from them.

10: Happy people make better decisions
Unhappy people operate in permanent crisis mode. Their focus narrows, they lose sight of the big picture, their survival instincts kick in and they’re more likely to make short-term, here-and-now choices. Conversely, happy people make better, more informed decisions and are better able to prioritize their work.

The upshot

Think back to a situation where you felt that you were at peak performance. A situation where your output was among the highest and best it’s ever been. I’m willing to bet that you were working at something that made you happy. Something that you loved doing.

There’s a clear link between happiness at work and productivity. This only leaves the question of causation: Does being productive make us happy or does being happy make us productive? The answer is, of course, yes! The link goes both ways.

But the link is strongest from happiness to productivity – which means that it if you want to be more productive, the very best thing you can do is focus on being happy with what you do?

So how do you get to be happy at work? There are two ways, really:

1. Get happy in the job you have. There are about a million things you can do to improve your work situation – provided you choose to do something, rather than wait for someone else to come along and do it for you.
2. Find a new job where you can be happy. If your current job is not fixable, don’t wait – move on now!

Related:

• How to find a job you’ll love
• How to lose your fear of being fired
• The feel factor – why no workplace can afford to ignore how people feel
• Kathy Sierra’s brilliant post on why it’s great to be happy

When your office was furnished, did the shopping list go something like this:

• One desk. Gray.
• One ergonomic office chair. Black.
• One waste paper basket. Gray plastic.
• One filing cabinet. Gray.

You know – the usual stuff. Typical. Traditional. Booooooring!

I’m not going to claim that a fancy desk or a weird chair is going to magically improve your creativity and productivity – but I am damn sure, that all that sameness and eternal corporate grayness, does nothing good for your ability to come up with great new ideas.

Here are some ways to spruce up a workplace that may actually inject some color and fun into your work environment.

Got Milk?

The Milk desk is a new design to match your Apple gear with it’s white surface and rounded edges.

It lowers and raises electrically, it has ways to hide the cable clutter, and it also has four compartments at one end that can be configured for storage, trash or, yes, as an aquarium.

Partition magic

Softwall is a great way to flexibly partition a room. It’s made of paper with a felt core, and I love it because it doesn’t eat all the light in the room (if you go for the white one).

It can be twisted into just about any shape or rolled up when you don’t need it and it dampens sound more than most room partitioners. Plus it looks amazing!

The wing desk

Or how about a desk made from the wing of a DC3 plane?

The saddle chair

The starting point for the Haag Capisco is just your average, garden-variety office chair – but they’ve moved on from there. The saddle seat gives you a more erect posture and doesn’t cut of the blood flow to your legs.

The seat and back are constructed so you can sit sideways or reversed on it and still support your arms. And the whole thing tilts back into a very comfortable reclined position.

I’ve had one of these myself – they rock.

Bean bags

Bean bags look great and can be used in a million different positions. Four bags and a coffee table and you have a great meeting room!

I’m partial to the the Sumo Omni (pictured above) myself. Disclosure: They once sent me a free one to review here on the blog.

Bibliochaise

Where do you keep all your reference manuals and handbooks? Close to where you can sit and read them, of course! Meet the Bibliochaise.

Stokke Garden

It’s a tree. It’s a sculpture. It’s… I don’t know what it is, but I like it.

Since I first saw these, I’ve wanted one and only the huge price tag has kept from picking one up. It looks strange, but is actually supremely comfortable and allows you to sit/lie in many positions. I know, I’ve spent quite some time in a showroom testing one thoroughly :o)

The meeting bed.

When your business is innovation, your office can’t really look like any other corporate wasteland. London-based innovation agency ?WhatIf! know that – as evidenced by e.g. the life-sized plastic cow statue painted like Spiderman in the lobby and the big red couch/bed they use for meetings:

Conference bike

This has got to be the coolest idea in a long time. 7 people pedal along, one of them steers. It’s the conference bike and I want one!! I also mentioned this in my post on seeeeeriously cool workplaces.

Art tables

I was sitting in my usual café writing this blogpost when I spotted a lady at the next table looking through some pictures of weird and beautiful desks.

Of course I had to ask her what the story was. Turns out she’s Marie Westh, an artist and these are one-off tables she created, first for exhibitions and then later on as usable art pieces. Check out Marie’s website with many more weird and fantastic creations.

A balance act

This is more a metaphor than a piece of furniture – but it’s pretty cool all the same.

The idea is that three people can have a meeting where they must work together to hold their balance during the meeting. Like we must each contribute to a conversation, to make it balanced. Impractical – but cool! More here.

Wood wall

Or how about an entire wall covered in cordwood? Not only is it amazingly beautiful, it’s also great for the acoustics and it gives the wall a great texture.

I saw my friends at Connecta and their roommates build this from a huge stack of cord woodon the floor to the finished wall. Superb!!

The upshot

So is it the furniture that determines whether a company is creative and fun or staid and boring? Of course not! But the type and variety of furniture does reflect the mood at the company. If you have row upon row of identical, gray desks and chairs then odds are this is not the place wild ideas are born.

And why exactly is it that everyone must have the same desk and chair? Why not let people choose for themselves, and give them a chance to create an environment that suits them. The resulting variety may be confusing to those who think that business is about structure, order and control… but it’s sure to be more stimulating and fun for those of us who think that work is about being happy.

There are more pictures of cool furniture in this flickr set.

Also check out my post on 10 seeeeeriously cool workplaces:

Or check out some other past favorites from the blog:

• Top 10 reasons why happiness at work is the ultimate productivity booster
• Top 10 mistakes managers of geeks make
• How to deal with a bad boss