Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
– Sigmund Freud
Category: Happy At Work
How to be happy at work
-
Quote
-
Monday Tip: Random acts of kindness at work
Your mission today is to perform at least three random acts of kindness at work. Three small, nice, generous, funny, surprising, silly, amazing, touching and/or kind acts for three different co-workers.If you’re stuck for ideas, here are a few suggestions:
- Bring someone a cup of coffee, without them asking
- Leave a flower on someone’s desk
- Leave a nice, hand-written note for a co-worker
- Help someone carry their stuff
- Pass out candy in the hallways
Do you have more suggestions? Write a comment!
For bonus points, do two more random acts of kindness to total stranges on the way home from work.
The Chief Happiness Officer’s monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.
-
Quote
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
– Arnold J. ToynbeeThank you to David Zinger for telling me about this excellent quote.
-
Banksy: The Bear And The Bee
The anonymous british street artist Banksy made a hilarious piece on the side of a trash container in Notting Hill, that is highly relevant to happiness at work. The text is a parody of a La Fontaine fable and goes like this:“Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass.
When Winter came the Bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself ‘I hope that busy little Bee will share some of his honey with me’. But the Bee was nowhere to be found – he had died of a stress induced coronary disease”.
-
Top performers leaving in droves
One large company finds that many of their top performers are absconding:It’s like clockwork. Every year a portion of our top talent decides it’s time to move on. Once those bonus or holiday checks are cashed, the flood gates open and the resignation letters start flowing in.
They’ve done an exit survey among the top performing employees leaving the company:
Of the 178 files, 83 people listed money as a reason for leaving. 62 listed it as the only reason.
Their conclusion: They must adjust salaries and compensation. My conclusion: They’re wrong. Here’s why.
(more…) -
What makes people happy or unhappy at work
I recently asked you what makes you happy or unhappy at work and got a lot of great answers. Thank you to everyone who responded! Though small, unscientific and totally without academic merit, there are still a few things to learn from this mini-survey, and any managers reading this could stand to take a look at the answers. Here are some of my conclusions.
(more…) -
Finding happy companies? What do you think?
Josh Peck emailed me a great suggestion last week:I’ve been keeping up with your blog for a few months now and first, thank you for bringing some sanity to the world of work. Secondly, as I read the blog, I keep seeing examples of great companies that are doing things right. How can I find companies near me that “get it”?
Could it be time for a CHO job board, where only enlightened companies are allowed to post?
Could it ever! And what if we add a Google map, where we can all plot in companies we know to be happy and what makes them happy? That way it would be easy to find happy companies to go work for in any country/city/town.
What else would we need? What would make this idea really great? Does something like this already exist?
Write a comment :o)
-
Great research on happiness at work from Gallup
I have found a veritable treasure trove of articles on happiness at work over at the Gallup Management Journal.
Here are a few great ones:
Construct the workplace to encourage interaction
You are three times as likely to have a close-knit group if the physical environment makes it easy to socialize.Dilbert Is Right, Says Gallup Study
A national employee survey confirms that uncomfortable work environments do make for disgruntled employees.Bringing Work Problems Home
Employees who aren’t engaged in their jobs are more likely to be unhappy in their personal lives too.Can Employees Be Friends With the Boss?
Yes, according to research. In fact, managers who demonstrate care for employees have more engaged staffs. -
How to lose your fear of being fired
Last year, my friend Jakob got a job he really likes in a medium-sized IT company. His boss is a great guy, his co-workers are competent and fun and his clients are all terribly nice people.
There’s only one fly in the ointment: Jakob’s boss’ boss (one of the VPs) is… less nice. He tends to summon all his employees to meetings and chew them out collectively and loudly for whatever problems he sees. He’s abrasive and unpleasant, always complains and never acknowledges his people for the good work they do. His emails to his underlings are a case study in rudeness. And, of course, he’s known for summarily firing people who cross him in any way.
Now, while Jakob likes his job, he doesn’t need it. He’s independently wealthy and so skilled he can always go out and get another job, and therefore has zero fear of being fired. Where other people in the company feel they must watch their tongue for fear of the consequences, he feels free to say and do exactly what he thinks is right.
And here’s the thing: When Jakob stands up to this VP and tells him that he won’t stand for his unpleasant approach and exactly why his abrasive style creates problems for the company, he listens. Nobody has ever told any VP at the company these things before, and for the first time the company has an employee that is totally unafraid of doing so.
The result: This particular VP is slowly changing his ways. And he certainly pulls none of his usual attacks on Jakob, who he knows simply won’t stand for it.
The risk of being fired is the biggest axe a company or a manager holdes over employees’ heads. It’s a mostly unstated, but well-known fact of working life that if you as an employee get too far out of line, you’ll be fired. Or terminated/axed/given the chop – don’t you just love those terms, with their unsubtle flavor of death?
(more…) -
Get to it
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are
– Theodore Roosevelt
So. The book is ending.
Right around this time the typical business book would probably tell you to:
- Set ambitious goals
- Prioritize those goals
- Set milestones
- Go to it with determination and willpower
This might work if you’re building a bridge, but it does not work for making yourself and your organization happy. I suggest that you do indeed make a plan, but that you do the exact opposite of the typical plan.
So I’m not going to give you the whole “if you want things to get better, you must do something about it yourself” and “it doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO or the security guard, YOU can make a change” spiel. Either you already know this or I can’t convince you that it’s true.
And anyway, it doesn’t matter if you believe it or not.
(more…)
