I’ve just returned from one of the most amazing speaking trips I’ve ever had.
First my company took a group of Danish business leaders to London to visit some of the best UK workplaces, including Innocent Drinks, WhatIf Innovation and Next Jump. The trip was massively inspiring and a lot of fun and the group learned a ton of best practices from these great companies.
Danish leaders visit Innocent Drinks
After that I flew straight from London to Antigua&Barbuda to do two keynotes for Canadian software company FreeBalance. One speech was for their steering committee and the other was for a group of finance ministers from different countries.
The view from my balcony in Antigua – click for full effect
Not only did I get to spend 4 days in Antigua, but I also got to speak to one of my most international audiences ever. The participants LOVED it and I get a major kick out of knowing that our ideas have now been spread to Mongolia, Sierra Leone, Laos, Uganda, Suriname, Kosovo and many other countries.
And this trip means that I have now spoken in 32 different countries :o)
Last week when I was in London I met Gaye Andrews who is Head of Customer Service, EMEA at PEER 1 Hosting and very much the woman behind creating a great workplace.
She shared a cool policy they have: Any employee who has an idea to make work more fun or the office a little more cool that costs less than £100 can just do it and expense the amount.
As an example, that’s how they got space hoppers.
I think it’s a cool idea, that can remove layers of bureaucracy and get employees involved in making the workplace better and happier.
I just got one of my favorite kinds of emails – from a company who is doing something to create a happier workplace.
Dean Stainton who is the Director of Client Services and People Systems at NRI Distribution in Canada wrote:
I wanted to reach out to you and let you know about a couple of things.
I had the fun of meeting you at the Worldblu Live Conference in Denver and attending your session on workplace happiness. As a result of that experience I decided to try something when I got back to our work environment.
I am very fortunate that I have accountabilities on both the HR and the Client Services side, knowing that getting 12 customer service reps onside with workplace happiness would be far more difficult than 4 HR people I decided to give it a try and tackle Workplace Happiness with the 12.
I bought copies of the book for everyone (Happy Hour is 9 – 5) and everyone took some time to read it on their own. After reading the book we discussed it in our weekly meeting (which has been named Happy Hour!) and each Client Services Rep and myself were left with three questions to answer:
What can you do to make NRI a happier place to be?
What can we do as a team to make NRI a happier place to be?
What is stopping you/us from doing the answers to the above?
Those are some great questions and Dean’s group came up with plenty of ideas and have implemented two already.
Dean’s team
One is a Praise Window at Dean’s office (erasable markers are available at the window and coworkers write down good things about each other for everyone to see). Dean writes:
No matter what people have written they are doing it with a smile on their face and typically a little giggle. Everyone who comes by stops to have a read and all either smile or laugh too….it is really contagious (but you already knew that). It has gotten to the point now where people in the warehouse are talking about doing the “praise window”. It has been particularly neat to see this coming from the Client Services side, as people have typically expected things like this from our HR team.
Someone else suggested “sharing the love,” writing:
I know that every now and then I get an email from a client who is super stoked about something. Most of the time I’m just happy that they’re happy and delete the email. Recently I forwarded one of these emails to Ops to SHOW them that the client was happy with the work they had done. This is praise coming directly from the client, and not just boring old me who says “yay! Thanks!” all the time. I think it was awesome for them to see, and made them feel good about their work! I know this isn’t something that happens often, but when it does…..share it!
Dean sums the whole thing up like this:
The ideas and enthusiasm have been amazing and once realizing that they didn’t need anyone’s “permission” to do cool, fun things it has been contagious.
And this is the team doing it, not the Manager asking them to do it!
We are very early in our journey but wanted to let you know the impact that your insight and passion have had on our team. I anticipate that the next time I send you an email it will have expanded past the Client Services Team. Thanks Alex!
What I really like about this is two things:
That Dean gave his team a chance to talk about what they could do to create a happier workplace
And of course that they then did it
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: Happiness at work is something we do.
I suggest you find a way to ask some of the same questions in your workplace and if you come up with something cool, please tell me about it :o)
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
– Soren Kierkegaard
I gave a speech at Boston University and during the Q&A someone mentioned the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard and called him Denmark’s Chief Unhappiness Officer. I loved that :o)
The quote above is probably his most famous and offers a real insight: It’s important to reflect on your past but you can’t live looking backwards.
This week’s tip for more happiness is to simply take a moment to reflect on the things you have done recently to create some happiness at work for yourself or others and to look forward as well
If you’re reading this, I can only assume that you agree with me that being happy at work is a worthwhile goal and something we should all focus on.
There are two steps to this. Take a few quiet minutes to yourself today, where you can reflect on these questions. Write your answers down, that makes it stick more.
1: Think back
So what have you done to promote happiness in your workplace? What worked and why did it work? What didn’t work and what could you have done instead?
And if you haven’t really done anything specific at work to create some happiness, ask yourself why not? What’s holding you back? If you continue to do nothing, what will that lead to?
2: Look forward
What can you do from now on? What have you learned works? What have you learned doesn’t work that you should stay away from?
What can you gain from creating more happiness at work for yourself and others? What can you lose if you don’t?
Woohoo – it’s Monday. What 3 things are you looking forward to at work this week?
I’ll go first:
1: I’m giving a speech tomorrow at Danish wind turbine company Vestas
2: Thursday and Friday we’re taking a group of Danish managers to London to visit some of the best UK workplaces
3: Saturday I fly to Antigua where I’m giving to speeches next week
I’m famous :-) This commercial is currently running on Danish TV and so far I’ve been recognized from it twice.
The ad is for a Danish union called Krifa, who distinguish themselves by focusing more on creating great work lives for their members and less on creating an adversarial relationship with employers.
Translation for non-Danes: “Our work lives change constantly, and we should be happy all along. In association with krifa, I’ve created podcasts, trainings, an ebook and a film that you can use to create more happiness and better results. See the film on krifa.dk.”
I recently had a chance to visit PEER1 hosting in Southampton in southern England and talk to their CEO Dominic Monkhouse about their culture.
PEER1 does hosting for big web sites and have around 120 employees in the UK. They have a very clear vision for creating customer happiness, and have realized that this is only possible when you have happy employees.
There are many cool aspects of their culture (here’s an excellent video where Dom explains it), but the most visible is how cool their office space is. First of all, it’s on the docks in Southampton with beautiful views over the water – but they’ve also gone out of their way to introduce many great-looking, fun and functional elements.
Here are my photos from a seeeeeriously cool workplace.
This is the lobby and the first thing you see when you enter the office. It’s also where they gather all employees for company-wide meetings.The slide. I tried it. It was awesome.A game of pool in progress in the middle of the work day.Great desks. Take up a little more space than the square ones but look a lot cooler.What UK workplace is complete without its own pub. That’s Dom, the CEO, behind the bar.Looking down at the slide.This is the wall where they celebrate their mistakes.Wall art made from old server parts.One of PEER1’s values engraved on a swing. Very fitting.Cool wall.
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