The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Upcoming gigs – and a vague hint

    Personlig Innovation

    I have some very interesting gigs coming up – including some international ones.

    Here are the ones I look forward to the most:
    May 21st: Personal Innovation, Copenhagen
    I’m putting on a half-day conference right here in Copenhagen about being innovative on a personal level. I will speak and so will Steven Shapiro, Gareth Garvey and Lotte Heise.

    Read all about it and sign up here.

    June 16+17: Festival In The Workplace, Nassau
    This conference is about introducing the experiences, methods and energy of the world’s festivals (like carnivals) into the workplace.

    See their brochure and sign-up info here: page 1, page 2.

    Yes – my work forces me to go the Bahamas. I have it tough :o)

    October 16+17: WorldBlu Live, New York
    This one is going to be amazing! It’s all about making our organizations democratic and freedom-based rather than command-and-control and fear-based.

    The WorldBlu conference two years ago is still one of the best business events I’ve ever attended!

    Read all about this year’s conference and sign up here.

    November 5: Thoughts on Happiness Symposium, Baarn, The Netherlands
    Some of the premier European happiness researchers and advocates are speaking at this event and I can’t wait to be a part of it. It’s going to be fairly intimate with only room for 120 participants, which always improves a conference.

    Read all about it and sign up here.

    … and now the hint
    And finally the vague hint: On Monday I will release a brand-new tool that is cool, fun and even (gasp!) potentially useful. Stay tuned! Further hinting: Facebook!

  • A happy dentist

    How’s this for happiness at work:

    Made me smile, anyway :o)

  • Guest post: One fun day

    Way Out

    I’m currently working to finish the first draft of my second book. In the mean time, please enjoy this guest post by Karl Staib.

    One free paid day

    Small companies are best positioned to offer the “one free paid fun day” perk. Let’s say you have ten employees and they receive three weeks off a year and they make an average of $45,000. You can add an extra day off and spending cash of $50 to each employee. This is a minimal investment of time-off and money for the amount of return received.

    This investment will pay dividends because your company is willing to do more than the minimum to make its employees happy. When you give back to your employees they will give back to you. It’s what humans do. Smile at to someone and see if they can resist smiling back at you. They usually can’t because they understand the social cues that make a successful society.

    The society that your company creates will determine the quality of work your company will get out of the staff. Let’s break down the numbers to see how realistic it is to implement the “one free paid fun day” perk.

    Time-off

    If you do give your employees one extra day off each year you’ll be adding 4.76% to their percentage of time off given, if they receive three weeks a year. Let’s say they average 250 working days a year; the company is giving up 0.40% of a working year. That’s less than half of 1%. It’s not a lot of time if you look at it over the whole year.

    Pay

    If you pay them $50 to go and have fun for that day you are only increasing their pay by 10% of 1%. It would only be 0.11% if they averaged a $45,000 salary in a year. That’s not much when viewed at from a whole year’s wages.

    Overall

    The big picture is most important. What will happen if your company gives a “one free paid fun day?” Your employees will tell their families and friends and they will probably inquire if there are any openings. Everyone likes working at a place where other people also want to work. There is a reason why good companies keep bringing in quality talent. They make sure that the employees’ friends know about the great perks of the company. If 60% of new hires are referrals, it means most of the hiring comes from friends and co-worker suggestions and this happens because the company is making sure that the work environment stays enjoyable.

    Happy employees, as we all know, perform better. Giving a perk that doesn’t require much money or effort can separate you from the rest of your competition. Every company wants their good reputation to spread throughout the industry through word of mouth.

    Here’s the Kicker

    Each employee must give you a short report, no more than 300 words, about what they did. This is so you can learn more about your employees and what makes them happy. If they took their kids to the local amusement park then you may be able to raffle off free tickets at the company Christmas party. If they volunteered at the local recycling center then you may want to send out a survey to implement more green tactics. You may also want to put them in charge of saving the environment and the company money by conserving and recycling.

    People want to work for a company that they feel has good values; they want to feel proud to tell people about where they work. I would imagine that not many people are proud to work for Phillip Morris, not because it’s a bad work environment, but because of the damage that cigarettes do to people’s lives.

    Employees at Google wear their Google gear with pride. Friends are always asking them what it’s like to work there and if they can get them a job. Google works hard at work happiness because they understand the long-term effects that it has on the company’s bottom line.

    It’s up to your company to figure out a plan that will have your employees telling their friends about the great company that they work at. You should start small. Implementing a “one free paid fun day” is a great way to learn more about the staff and separate yourself from the competition.

    Do you think your company would ever implement a “one free paid fun day?”

    Karl Staib writes about unlocking and kicking open the door to working happy at his own blog Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this article, you may like to subscribe to his feed or read one of his most popular articles, The Five Most Important Things You Need to Know About Working Happy and 7 Tips to Process Your Stress Faster.

  • First review of my book in Danish

    Happy Hour fra 8 til 16My first book came out in Danish last week and the very first review gives it 5 stars out of 6 and has this to say besides:

    …will certainly inspire employees and managers…

    Alexander Kjerulf gives a clear picture of what happiness at work is and how it happens when we get great results and surround ourselves with pleasant co-workers.

    The book’s strength lies in the enthusiasm and sincerity it is obviously written on. A quick and useful read.

    I’m incredibly proud of the review by new Danish career magazine for Women CV. They. Not only do they warmly recommend the book but they understand and appreciate the light (dare I say happy) tone I chose for the book.

    If you’d like to read my book in Danish it’s in the shops now or you can get it online for 199 DKK.

    The book is also out in English and in Spanish:

    Dutch, Indonesian and Chinese translations are coming in 2008.

    I’d like to see the book published in even more countries and especially in more English-speaking countries. Do you know any publishers in, say, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, or…? Write a comment or contact me if you’d like to help me with this.

  • Top 10 bad excuses for staying in a bad job

    If you’re unhappy at work, I’m sure that the thought “Man, I really should quit!” crosses your mind occasionally.

    So why don’t you?

    Even if you long desperately to quit, to get away from your horrible workplace, annoying co-workers or abusive managers, you may hesitate to actually do anything about it, because right on the heels of that impulse come a lot of other thoughts that hold you back from quitting.

    Each of these excuses may sound to you like the voice of sanity, offering perfectly good reasons why it is in fact better to stay and endure that bad job just a little longer, but look a little closer, and they don’t really hold up. What they do instead is keep you trapped in a job that is slowly but surely wearing you down.

    Here are 10 of the most common bad excuses for staying in a bad job.

    #1 “Things might get better”

    That jerk manager might be promoted out of there. That annoying co-worker could quit.That mound of overwork could suddenly disappear.

    On the other hand, things might also get worse. Or they might not change at all. If you’ve already done your best to improve your job situations and nothing’s happened, just waiting around for things to improve by themselves make little sense.

    #2 “My boss is such a jerk but if I quit now, he wins.”

    Who cares. This is not about winning or losing, this is your life. Move on, already.

    #3 “I’m not a quitter.”

    Well guess what these somewhat successful people have in common: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Tiger Woods, Reese Witherspoon, John McEnroe and John Steinbeck?

    Yep, they all dropped out of Stanford.

    The old saying that “Winners never quit and quitters never win” is just plain wrong and leaving a bad job is just common sense.

    #4 “I’ll never get another job”

    Well not if you stay in your current job while it slowly grinds you down, you won’t! Move on now while you still have some self-confidence, motivation and energy left.

    #5 “If I quit I’ll lose my salary, status, company car, the recognition of my peers, etc.”

    Yes, quitting a job carries a price and that makes it scary. We all know this intimately.

    But few of us ask this question: What is the price of staying in a job that makes you unhappy?

    That price can be very high. It can ruin your work life but also your marriage, your family life, your health, your self-esteem and your sanity. Not all at once, but a little bit every day.

    #6 “Everywhere else is just as bad”

    That’s just nonsense. There are plenty of great workplaces in every industry.

    #7 “I’ve invested so much in this job already”

    You may have sacrificed a lot of time, energy and dignity already in attempts to make things better. This will make it more difficult for you to call it quits.

    I’m reminded of how Nigerian email scammers sucker in people. At first it’s a small investment, but then the amounts grow and grow. At each step the victim is reluctant to stop because that would mean losing all the money he’s spent so far.

    Quit anyway. Staying on is just throwing good time after bad.

    #8 “I’ll lose my health insurance.”

    I have a lot of sympathy for this argument. Where I live (Denmark), everybody gets free health care regardless of their employment situation so I can’t imagine the leverage this must give employers.

    One answer: Start looking for another job with similar health benefits.

    Also: Ask yourself what good job related health insurance is if your job is actually making your sick – which bad jobs can absolutely do.

    #9 “My job pays very well”

    I have zero sympathy for this argument. I don’t care how well your job pays; if it makes you unhappy it’s not worth it.

    Quite the contrary, if you make a lot of money now, use that financial security to quit and find a job that’ll make you happy.

    #10 “Quitting will look bad on my CV”

    Whereas staying for years in a job that grinds you down and goes nowhere will look excellent.

    The upshot

    Many of us would be much happier at work if we quit bad jobs sooner. I’ve talked to many people who have finally managed to quit a bad job and only wished they’d done it sooner. I have yet to meet a single person who quit a crappy job only to wish they’d stayed on longer.

    You may have perfectly good reasons to stay in your crappy job – all I’m saying is that it pays to examine those reasons very closely to make sure that they hold up.

    ‘Cause it may just be the fear talking.

    Your take

    What do you think? Have you ever been stuck in a lousy workplace? What kept you from leaving? What finally made you quit? Please write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.

    Related posts

  • Epic office pranks

    It’s Friday. Take a moment to enjoy a couple of these epic office pranks.

    Here’s my favorite:

  • Some ridiculous quotes from some stupid book about (get this) happiness at work

    Happy Hour is 9 to 5Jørgen Larsen just finished reading my book and has blogged some of his favorite quotes from it. Thanks Jørgen!

    Also, Billy Waters just updated his fantastic mind map of Ricardo Semler’s book Maverick. Mind mapping an entire book is an excellent way to preserve the salient points for yourself and Billy gets all the important stuff in there.

    Semler’s two books Maverick and The Seven-Day Weekend are some of the best and most important books I’ve ever read about happiness at work and they’ve been a huge inspiration to my work.

    Billy has also promised to do a mind map of my book and I can’t wait to see it.

    And there’s more great news on my book:

  • Is the customer always right? Your comments.

    The Customer is Always Right

    My post on why “The Customer is Always Right” is wrong has generated an amazing amount of attention. It’s been read by 100,000s of people and been mentioned all over the blogosphere. It even got picked up in The New York Times.

    But most of all, it gets a LOT of great comments. Here are some examples.

    Chris wrote:

    I run a small company with about 20 employees. One day I heard commotion coming from the reception area. I hear a man yelling “I am the customer, you work for me and the customer is always right!”. I immediately went up and said, “No sir, you can’t get away with what you get away with at Walmart here. This young lady works for me and no matter what you think you were right about, you raised your voice and are no longer welcome.”

    He needed our services and wrote a letter of apology for his ‘cranky mood’.

    You raise your voice and you are out. No exceptions.

    That’s it in a nutshell.

    Grant wrote:

    I read this post the other day and it was hiding in the back of my mind then this past Thursday I had a job interview. The interviewer asked me, “What do you feel about the statement, ‘The customer is always right’?” I remembered this post and mentioned these points as well as embellished to make it more appropriate to the job description.

    After I answered that, the interviewer told me that I was the first person all day to answer that question correctly (she had already interviewed 6 people). Today I got a call offering me the position. I’d like to think that it had something to do with this blog post.

    Thanks :)

    SEE MOM! BROWSING THE INTERNETS IS A GOOD THING!!!

    I’ve told Grant that I take full credit for him getting the job and given him an account number where he can deposit 10% of his first year’s salary :o)

    Marie wrote:

    We recently had a customer who bounced a check, and had the audacity to call my customer service manager with a tirade of yelling & profanity (before she could explain what had happened). She was calm and waited for him to settle down and tried to explain… He continued to use profanity, only to stop when my CS Manager politely told him that if he didn’t quit, she would hang up… Later, he emailed a complaint to the corporate office stating how rude and unprofessional she had been…

    The customer DOES NOT have the right to harass my employees. I just happened to be in the office that day and could hear him screaming at her over the phone. I think she handled it WONDERFULLY; I took her out to lunch!

    I don’t believe that a customer has the right to verbally assault my employees and I have trained them not to take that type of abuse from anyone.

    SueBob writes:

    I worked at a print shop where my manager would occasionally fire customers. In four years, I think it was 3 people. He told one person, “I won’t have you abuse my employee.”

    I would have crawled through broken glass for him. It was one of the best employment experiences of my life.

    These comments show that there are many companies out there that realize that putting the employees first actually results in better customer service. The formula is simple: Happy employees = happy customers.

    But of course not everyone gets it. Yet.

    Anonymous writes:

    I work in a call center and showed this article to my boss. I’m told that senior managers view the ideas presented here as “silly.” Is it any wonder employees think our company is out to get them?

    Customers are allowed to verbally abuse our employees and this is supposed to be a sign of great customer service. All the while, lower level managers are directed to keep turnover down. The company doesn’t understand that people are not satisfied in a job where the company supports abuse towards them.

    Get a clue.

    Sheeesh!

  • Happiness in practice

    One of the regular readers and commenters on this blog is Eric Deniau, who’s VP of Engineering at Enensys in France. The really cool thing about Eric is that he doesn’t just stop at reading about happiness at work – he does something about it, and has tried a lot of things to make himself and his employees happy.

    Eric recently told me about some of the things he’s been up to:

    Some news about what is going on in my company.

    Let me first say that I do have your book on my desk, and I refer to it quite often in my day to day activities. I must confess that while I adhere 150% to its content and look permanently for ways to make people happier in their jobs, I still feel some difficulty to implement concretely a happy plan. Putting in place concrete actions to make the workplace more fun is not that easy: work can be a fun place, it is still work and too far-fetched ideas could be seen out of place given our culture, in my opinion. But I may be too shy and can be wrong on that point…

    That said, I have some interesting things to mention that happened recently, without a « real » happy plan in place:
    – most employees bring eating or drinking stuff (we are in France, after all) for their anniversary and employment birthday: croissant, home made cakes, crepes, etc… I personaly offered a drink and buffet before lunch for my first year in the company; this creates regular occasions to gather everybody in a friendly way;

    – small and soft rugby balls have been introduced in the lab following the world cup; when I see one around, I throw it to the next office as everyone else would do;

    – a lot of people have a lunch break onsite, and some like to play to a network game after. Instead of looking with a black eye at the screens I see when walking around, I smile and asks who wins (I do not personally enjoy network game player).

    – when coming back from a business trip to Switzerland before easter, I brought back easter eggs;

    – Our IT manager is the last one to present during company meetings: as he is a fun guy (unusual for an IT manager, I know, but it happens !), it is now the tradition that he displays a joke at the end of his slides and hence the monthly company meeting, ranging from funny YouTube videos to an automatic tool generating weirdo product names.

    Also, it has become a joke to say « happy plan ! » when a fun or simply nice idea comes to the mind of my close collaborators, as a kind of motto.

    Now, when the situation is more tense due to unhappy events occuring (it happens!), this kind of things have to be handled with more care: it’s not easy and sometimes not fair to have fun in that occasions. Recent exemples I have include stopping a contract of an under-performing employee, or the announcement of poor financial results. The good point I noticed is that this kind of “happy plan” behaviours comes back quite rapidly after several days, when re-initiating the thing a little bit.

    I will soon poll people again to know if they are happy at work. Personnaly, I am definitely Yeah++.

    More to come…

    As I wrote in my book (and constantly harp on in the blog) happiness at work comes mostly from doing a lot of small, easy and fun things regularly, preferably daily and Eric is definitely on the right track with easter eggs and foam rugby balls.

    But notice that he doesn’t stop there – he’s also not afraid to tackle difficult situations, like terminating an underperforming employee.

    That is a fine balance for a leader to walk – and a great way to create a happy workplace. Kudos, Eric!

  • Quote

    Bay Jordan, the CEO of Zealise, (go read his excellent blog) sent me this quote:

    “Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.”
    – Ayn Rand

    I’d love to hear your opinion on it. Do you agree? Are values (personal or corporate) making you happy or unhappy? Are they an important part of being happy or more peripheral?