How to be happy at work
Everyone has bad days at work – those really frustrating and stressful days that we just want to be over. But how how often do we have bad work days and what causes them?
Our brand new survey of over 700 employees worldwide shows that bad work days are disturbingly common and reveals some of the main causes.
See the main findings here – it’s pretty fascinating stuff.
Tons of people all around the world follow the continuing adventures of the 4th floor stapler from Innocent’s London HQ:
As these things often do, it started with a minor act of rebellion. A person pushed by circumstance into an act they never thought they’d be capable of. One morning, driven over the edge by one label too many, they grabbed the fourth floor stapler and took it to the second floor. The world would never be the same again.
And then things escalated and the stapler has nown been to The Ritz, to Finland, to New York and to Disneyland – just to mention a few of its travels.
That’s just hilarious. Here’s the whole story of the 4th floor stapler… so far.
Ever seen something similar where you work?
Innocent Drinks want to surprise and delight their staff. Learn about two hilarious ways they’ve done that: Sexy Powersuit Day and The Lift of Loooooove.
We’re preparing the next International Quit Your Crappy Job Day for March 31 2016.
As part of that, we’re going to create an e-book on quitting and as part of that we want to hear your story of quitting.
Have you ever left a crappy job voluntarily? What did that job do to you? Why did you leave? How did you do it? Then what happened? Did you regret your decision?
Write a comment below – we would LOVE to hear your story.
A lot of people will tell you that happiness is a choice. But if that were so, wouldn’t the same also be true of other positive emotions?
If you’ve fallen out of love with your partner and are considering leaving them, couldn’t you just choose to love that person again?
If you discover you’ve chosen the wrong major in college and find it really boring, couldn’t you just choose to be fascinated by it and stick with it?
I think most of us would agree that this is not realistic. So why would happiness be a choice?
Thought: Only the truly incompetent need to work 80 hours a week to succeed at something.
Discuss.
I’m featured in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera under the headline “Il manager della felicità arriva in azienda” – The happiness manager arrives in the workplace.
I’ve been getting a lot of emails from Italy since the article came out and the message is always the same: Italian workplaces don’t focus on happiness and having a Chief Happiness Officer would be a welcome development.
What would happen if you devoted 6 months of your life to helping others – free and anonymously.
The Free Help Guy tried exactly that experiment and in this AWESOME and inspiring speech he shares how he has helped people around the world for no reward and without any recognition.
Almost as a side effect, he also found that helping others made him happier.
He still helps people anonymously, which is why we’ve blurred out his face in the video.
This is just AWESOME :)
I would argue that most jobs, no matter how serious they may be on the surface, offer the chance to show your playful side.
And if they don’t, there are other jobs that do!
This is simply one of the best new business books I’ve read in a LONG time.
What if you ran your organization based on actually, genuinely caring for every single person in it? How would that inform strategy and leadership and how would it affect employees and the bottom line?
Bob Chapman’s leadership at Barry Wehmiller shows what that looks like and it is amazing.
Barry Wehmiller is essentially in the business of buying struggling production companies around the world and making them happier and more productive by introducing their processes and culture. They have 8,000 employees in 100 locations around the world in a large variety of businesses and they’re profitable and growing fast.
In this short speech, Bob Chapman explains their leadership philosophy:
The book contains a ton of powerful lessons that any workplace could learn from, but for me, these were the 2 most powerful things in the book.
1: Performance focus – with people first.
Of course the company cares about performance, but they realize that people come first. Chapman shares the story of what happened when a lean consultant came to do a presentation:
We scheduled a kickoff meeting in Green Bay with a group of senior leaders to learn about Lean and begin our continuous-improvement journey.
On the first afternoon, a consultant gave an opening presentation on Lean. After forty-five minutes, I stood up and walked out of the room in frustration. The presentation was all about justifying bringing Lean tools into an organization because they help add to the bottom line and get more out of people. “This will help you get more out of people.”
That’s when I left the room.
Brian followed nervously after me, glancing back to see if the presenter was still speaking.
“So, what’s going on?”
With fire in my voice, I said, “Brian, we are never going to have a Lean journey like that in our organization. We are not going to suck the life out of people and take advantage of them in that way. We are going to build a Lean culture focused on people or we’re not going to do it at all.”
I had made it clear that our version of Lean was to be about people.
Too many CEOs would never even catch that. They are steeped in the idea that results come first and processes like Lean are used as a tool for that purpose.
At Barry Wehmiller, Lean has become a tool to make work more fun and meaningful for the employees. And that in turn drives better results, than a direct results focus.
2: No layoffs
Your values are tested in hard times. It’s a lot easier to be nice and appreciative and people focused when the business is profitable but when revenue takes a hit and your company is losing money that’s when you get a chance to show if you take your values seriously of if they’re just pretty words that you don’t really mean.
In the book’s most interesting chapter (for me at least) Chapman discusses what happened when the recession hit them in 2008. They lost a large amount of business and were faced with massive pressure from their bank to cut costs.
Most companies around the world would not hesitate for a second before enacting layoffs. It’s just what you do, despite the fact that evidence shows it’s actually bad for business.
Chapman instead worked hard to come up with a plan that would ensure the company’s survival without laying off a single person – which they did.
I HIGHLY recommend this book. It’s a great read and shares not only a great business case but also Chapman’s personal story which is interesting in itself.
The book shows that happy workplaces can exist in any industry (even production) and that you can systematically transform bad, failing workplaces into happy successful ones. Provided you do so with some good structure, great leadership and the basic idea that people deserve to be treated well at work.
The Chief Happiness Officer Academy is our most in-depth 3-day training where we share everything we know about creating happier workplaces. Get an in-depth background in happiness at work, hear about the latest research in the field and learn how to use this in your own business.