Category: Happy At Work

Aaaahhh… Summer vacation. Depending on your fancy it’s time to lie on the beach with a good book, wear out your shoe soles exploring a strange city or scream your head off skydiving or in some other adrenaline-driven pursuit.

But invariably the vacation ends and you go back to work, and that transition can be a little rough.

Do you know that feeling? You come back to work happy and full of energy – but by the end of the first work day, you’re already feeling tired an unhappy. It’s almost like you didn’t have a vacation at all.

So here are a five tips to help you stay happy when you get back to work.

1: While you’re away, get away

Don’t take the company mobile and laptop on vacation. Don’t check your voice mail and email.

The point of a vacation is to get away and go to a different mental space, and if you’re preoccupied with work, chances are you’ll both enjoy your vacation less and get less relaxation out of it.

2: Let yourself get behind

When you get back from your vacation, you will invariably have fallen behind and have a lot of work to catch up on. There will be a ton of voice mails, emails and tasks that need your attention. THAT’S FINE!!! It’s unavoidable and it’s not your fault.

Look at it this way: If you can leave the company for two weeks and there’s no work waiting for you, you’re not really needed there.

So don’t expect to have a clear desk on your first day back – allow yourself to be behind and to catch up steadily.

3: Start with some easy tasks

When you get back to work, don’t immediately throw yourself at the toughest, hairiest most complicated tasks you have. Ease into work by doing something easy and simple – something you know you can do. Once you’re back in full swing you can go at the tough tasks.

4: Don’t overwork to catch up

It can be really tempting to work long hours to catch up after your vacation. DON’T!!! Work regular hours and stick to point 2 above.

5: Ask for help if you need it

If you find it difficult to catch up, don’t be afraid to ask your co-workers or manager for help. It’s important for you to be aware of any outstanding tasks that may have become critically late in your absence, and if you could use some help – it’s your responsibility to ask for it! It also greatly increases the chance that you will actually get help.

If you use these tips, you may find that your vacations feel more like vacations and that you can be even happier at work.

A warning

But on a fundamental level, there is something wrong with the idea that work drains you of energy and weekends and vacations recharge you. I know that this is how most people feel – but that’s not how it should be.

If work typically drains you of energy – if every week ends up draining you of life so you barely make it to Friday afternoon where you can finally relax – then something’s wrong. Don’t accept that state of affairs just because everyone else does.

When you’re happy at work, work can actually be a regenerative activity that leaves you with more energy so you leave the workplace with a spring in your step most days!

And THAT is the ultimate way to beat the post-vacation blues: Have a job you actually like!

Your take

Do you ever get the post-vacation blues? What do you do to beat’em? Have you also noticed that vacations these days seem to be more tiring than work (as this article says)?

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Don’t think I’ve ever been called “mighty” before but I kinda enjoy it!

This is brilliant: A Danish company called clever has just abolished all job titles.

Instead of a title, all 400 employees now craft a sentence starting with “I am responsible for…” that should accurately describe what they do.

Their CEO Casper Kirketerp-Møller wrote this:

What is a title other than a relic from a former age? An instrument of power invented to create hierarchy. A symbol that we have given more power than it deserves.

We have deluded ourselves that our titles say something about who we are. That we’re worth a little more when it says something fancy on our business cards and LinkedIn profile. But titles don’t serve us well. They boost our ego and self-image – not our self-worth and self-respect. Titles are empty calories that say nothing about the person we are.

Even without a title, you can still advance in your career at Clever and have plenty of chances to get more responsibilities both in your profession and as a leader.They call it career growth forward, not just upward.

I could not agree more. I have previously written about job titles and how they usually say nothing about what people actually do at work but often cause a lot if infighting among employees:

• Who cares about your job title – tell me what you do
• How one team at Quicken Loans got rid of job titles
• How to kill off job titles

How would you describe your job without a title, starting with the words “I am responsible for…”?

The latest Gallup Workplace report has a ton of bad news for US workplaces. They open with this depressing statement:

Employees across America are feeling increasingly detached from their jobs. They are seeking new job opportunities at the highest rate since 2015, while overall satisfaction with their employer has returned to a record low.

This is important for US companies to know and act on and I commend Gallup for pointing it out.

But then it seems they try to spin their own numbers in a couple of cases to make it look like remote work is part of the problem and not (as is actually the case) part of the solution.

One headline reads “Exclusively Remote Employees Feel Least Connected to Organization’s Mission or Purpose” but the actual differences are tiny with 29% feeling connected for remote workers and 31% for fully in-office workers. You can’t tell me that is not within the statistical margin of error for this study.

I have recently seen people cite this particular finding as an argument against remote working, so people are taking the wrong lessons from this.

It’s also worth noting that the group that is most connected to the company’s purpose is hybrid workers. If being in the office is so great, how do you explain that?

Another headline is “Few Employees Believe Virtual Meetings Are More Effective Than In-Person Meetings” but the data shows that most employees actually believe remote meetings are as effective as in-person meeting.

The also cite “Hybrid and remote growing pains” as one of the factors making American workers less engaged when it might as well be the fact that US companies are now forcing people back to the office in large numbers:

What is causing people to detach from their employers? Hybrid and remote growing pains: Hybrid work entails switching work locations throughout the week and often results in team members working different schedules, which naturally challenges communication and coordination. The physical distancing inherent to remote work can also create an emotional distance. Gallup research shows that fully remote workers are consistently less connected to their organization’s mission or purpose compared with their hybrid counterparts.

It basically seems to me that they chose to put a negative spin on remote work in a couple of cases even though studies show that remote workers are more effective and happier compared to their in-office counterparts.

Even Gallup’s own report confirms that in-office workers are the least engaged – this time by a significant margin! How do you get from that to “remote growing pains are making workers less happy?”

The lesson here really should be that US workers are hurting and remote work is part of the solution, not the problem.

But don’t take my word for it – read the report for yourself and let me know what you think. Is remote work a major factor making US workers unhappy or is it something else… and what might that be?

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We have two more free webinars about happiness at work coming up:

June 4: How To Keep Remote Workers Happy And Productive

How do we make remote work work? What are the specific, effective ways to ensure that employees can still do great work and connect with each other even though they’re not in the office in person all the time?

June 18: How To Solve Problems To Build A Happy Workplace

No workplace is perfect. Even the happiest workplaces in the world have problems. But great workplaces are good at finding and solving their problems.

If we want to build happy and successful workplaces, we can’t only focus on doing good things for employees, we need to be focused and strategic about identifying and fixing any problems employees see.

Read more and sign up here – it’s FREE!

I came across an awesome LinkedIn post from Jonas Juehl Thomsen who is a Regional Director at Danish bank Arbejdernes Landsbank.

It was written in Danish, so unless you’re Danish, you would not have seen it – but you definitely should, so here is my translation of the key parts:

We do not have a goal of retaining employees! Instead, we focus on creating happiness at work and thus make people want to stay.

In Arbejdernes Landsbank, we make an effort to make it fun to go to work!

This is a prerequisite for succeeding with our ambitions for employees, the customer experience and, not least, strengthening the bank’s position.

For me, the most important success criterion is “Taking responsibility and doing the right thing”!

This requires that we do not just lend a helping hand as leaders.
But that we also make an effort to make it easy to do the right thing for our employees.

When this succeeds, work makes sense.

And that makes people want to stay!

In Arbejdernes Landsbank, several years ago, we did away with meaningless target metric regimes. Instead, we focus on what effort we should make for each other and for the customers!

Why? Because it creates the right conditions for us to always put the customer at the center – and deliver the attentive and competent advice that customers should expect.

Close to 50% of new hires in the sector are gone after five years. Unfortunately, these are facts in yesterday’s article in FinansWatch with Finansforbundet as a source.

In my view, this is not an employee problem. It is a management responsibility – which we have already taken to heart!

Let’s once and for all drop retention as a focus area but instead focus on making it worth it to stay. This means that we automatically show up with positive energy and courage for the changes we need to succeed with.

It is no coincidence that customers have chosen us as the Danes’ preferred bank for 16 years in a row!

When employees are thriving, customers can feel it.

Do you also seek a workplace with the right focus on your well-being and development Please contact me on or visit our website for vacancies.

How awesome is this. No performance metrics, just a focus on helping customers and coworkers. No direct focus on retention, just a focus on making employees happy.
Kudos, Jonas.

Here’s another detail I liked: Jonas’ LinkedIn profile lists his title as “Regionsdirektør I Mennesket først!” which translates to “Regional Director of Humans first!”