The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • 3 Things Your Workplace Can Learn from Parks and Recreation

    Parks and Recreation - Season 7

    The TV show Parks and Recreation recently ended and while I was sad to see it go, the final episodes were awesome and very satisfying.

    I have admired the show for a while not just for being very funny and moving but also for how much the cast and crew obviously loved their work.

    Here are 3 lessons any workplace could stand to learn from the cast of Parks and Rec.

    3: Have someone nice at the top

    In this clip Chris Pratt talks about the positive atmosphere they had on the set and how that started with their biggest star (#1 on the call sheet) Amy Poehler.

    2: Give people freedom to screw up

    Here the cast talk about the freedom they have to improvise lines because the set is “a super-safe environment” as Jim O’Heir who plays Garry/Jerry/Larry/Terry on the show puts it.

    I love that – it reminds me of an article I wrote previously about Why You Should Celebrate Mistakes at Work.

    1: Praise each other

    Here are two clips from a late night show where the cast plays a game in which they have to toast each other in 20 seconds.

    Could your team do something like this?

    I think we all know that the world of movies and TV is not necessarily very happy. Just for contrast, here’s a list of movie co-stars who hated each other’s guts.

    So to see a group of people who clearly love each other  working together to create something amazing is all the more encouraging and I think there are some lessons here for workplaces all around the world.

  • What makes you unhappy at work? Participate in our survey.

    What makes you unhappy at work? Participate in our survey.

    Normally our work is focused very much on the positive when we help our clients become happier workplaces. But it is equally important to know what makes us unhappy at work and do our best to eliminate these frustrations.

    So we’ve set up a survey and want to know how often you have bad days at work and what makes them bad. The survey has 12 quick questions and should take 4-5 minutes to fill out.

    We look forward to seeing and sharing the results.

  • The Parks and Rec cast on improvising lines

    In this clip the cast of Parks and Recreation talk about improvising some of their lines and how the funniest line ever spoken on the show was improvised by Chris Pratt.

    I really like that they get to do that and I love Jim O’Heir’s comment at the end about how they can do that because the studio is a safe environment where they feel free to take a chance and make mistakes.

    Every workplace could learn from that.

  • Coffee please

    coffee please

    Love this. Maybe we should introduce a similar pricing model for our speeches and workshops :)

  • 5 tips to stay happy at work even when you’re very busy

    Yesterday we had our latest webinar – this one was on staying happy even when you’re busy at work. You can watch the whole thing here:

    Get the slides right here.

    Let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments. And if you have ever tried being busy AND happy at the same time, please tell us what made that possible.

  • The Woohoo Partner Program is now OPEN

    launch-button

    Yesterday we pushed the big red “LAUNCH” button and invited the first 15 partners from around the world onto our new Partner Program. We currently have partners in Denmark, Norway, Australia, UK, USA, Turkey, Argentina and South Africa.

    The Partner Program teaches you everything we know about creating happier workplaces. It’s aimed at external consultants who want to sell their services and internal consultants (e.g. HR) who can use the tools internally in their workplace.

    There’s an insane amount of material in there, including 13,5 hours of video – with more coming.

    Want to joins us? Read all about it here.

  • App

    I just supported a sweet little app idea, based on sound principles from positive psychology.

    Check it out and see if you want to help this app happen.

  • The CEO who made pancakes

    From the workshop

    A few weeks ago I did a workshop for a pharmaceutical company in Iceland called Medis as part of their 30 year anniversary and strategy kick-off. As you can see, they kinda liked it :) The guy in the front row in the blue suit is their CEO Valur Ragnarsson.

    Now, as we all know a workshop itself changes nothing so we always work with our clients to come up with a plan that will actually make a difference in the workplace. As part of that plan, I challenged Valur to come up with something he could do that would be fun, easy and visible – just to show people that he is committed to creating a happy workplace.

    And a few days later he sent me these pics where he’s making fresh waffles and pancakes for his employees:

    medis 1

    medis 3medis 2What an awesome idea :)

    I asked Valur how he liked the experience and here’s what he said:

    I thoroughly enjoyed it – the biggest joy I actually got out of observing the reaction of the colleagues !

    FYI we did not announce anything but simply showed up in the corridor without notice and took people pleasantly bysurprise….. now it will boil down to a plan and team supporting this (which we have in place already btw).

    The only problem was that the smoke alarm kept going off, so they had to temporarily disable it :)

    medis 4

    Well done, Valur!

    Just to be clear: We’re not saying that you can turn an unhappy workplace into a happy one, by having the CEO make pancakes :)

    What we’re saying is that upper management can support the process of creating a happy workplace by doing something fun and unexpected that shows employees that they are committed to the goal and willing to go a little bit outside of their comfort zone.

  • Happy employees = happy customers

    Here’s an excerpt from a speech I did in London where I focused on creating world class customer service by making your employees happy.

    The video text is in Danish but the video itself is in English :)

  • Quote

    “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants.

    The question is what are we busy about?”

    – Henry David Thoreau