Category: Happy At Work

What’s the corporate culture like in your current workplace? What’s the ideal corporate culture for you? How much of an overlap is there between the current and your ideal? In what other companies could you find more of a match and be happier at work?

That’s what a great new website, jiibe.com can help you find out.

I’ve been fooling around with it and I love it! It’s really simple – the website asks you a series of questions, and you tell it how things are at your current company and how you’d ideally like them to be.

At the end you get a description of your ideal corporate culture and a list of the companies that match it best – based not on how those companies define themselves but on how other jiibe users rated their workplaces.

I really liked the questions in the survey, which ask about day-to-day situations in a company. This means that they poll what values a company actually has – as opposed to the values they say they have. Also the user interface is seriously slick and of course the whole concept is brilliant.

I believe that jiibe can help job seekers find more happiness at work by letting us find companies where we are more likely to fit in.

And the development possibilities are endless. How about asking users how happy they are at work in order to investigate the effect on corporate culture on job satisfaction. You could let companies state their desired corporate culture and determine the gap between desired and actual culture.

I could go on, but I won’t. Instead, check out jiibe.com, take their survey – and then come back here and let me know what your ideal corporate culture is like in a comment.

For instance, my ideal culture is:

consensus encouraging empowering improvising innovating fun flat cooperative transparent

What’s yours?

Sean Aiken is doing 52 jobs in 52 weeks. Anybody, anywhere can offer him a job for one week and in the past 28 weeks he’s been a Dairy Farmer, Radio DJ, Veterinarian, Advertising Executive, Florist, Job Recruiter, Yoga Instructor, TV Talk Show intern and Snowshoe guide. He just completed Week #29 in which he was a Tradeshow Salesman in Atlanta, GA.

Talk about job-hopping :o)

It gets better: Sean’s one week employers donate any wages to charity, and he’s raised a little over $11,000 so far.

I had a chance to ask Sean a couple of questions about happiness at work – he ought to have some experiences to draw on by now…

Q: So Sean, what have been the most fun jobs so far?
I think the most fun jobs so far have been: Radio DJ, Brewmaster, Rock Climbing Instructor, Advertising Executive, and Dairy Farmer.

Q: What has this experience taught you about enjoying work – is there something you can pass on to people everywhere who may not be having much fun in their current work.
I have found that when I ask people what they like most about their jobs, the response is often the people they work with. I have realized that you could have the best or worst job in the world, though it is the people you work with that are going to make it a positive or negative work environment.

I think our attitudes play a big part in our workplace satisfaction. If you are not enjoying your job, I have learned that even small changes can make a big difference and it may not be necessary to change professions completely. Perhaps, simply changing departments, asking for more responsibility, etc.

Q: Has there been one job where you thought “Yeah – I could get to like THIS!”
I think I could get to like most things. I could definitely see myself in all my previous One Week Jobs in some capacity or another, though if I had to choose one, I enjoyed working for a non-profit as a Cancer Fundraiser. Everybody I was working with were so passionate about their jobs which made for a great work environment and I really liked the fact that what I was doing was contributing to benefiting the lives of so many.

I think Sean’s project is a fantastic idea and I know he’s still looking for work – so consider employing Sean for a week in your company, I’m sure it’ll be a blast! Check out the One Week Job website to learn more and to see video from Sean’s previous employment adventures.

More and more companies are starting to care for the environment, and this is one area to which we can all contribute. Can you get your company to recycle paper? To use less electricity or water? To save on fuel or other resources? To start buying more environmentally friendly products? Make yourself heard, start a campaign, enlist support. Go green!

What’s really cool is that companies are learning that being environmentally friendly actually makes them MORE money. Interface, the world’s largest manufacturer of carpets, designed and manufactured a new kind of carpet that was environmentally friendly, and while the design and production of this new product was more expensive than their regular line, it instantly became a bestseller and has made the company a fortune.

Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface, had a rude awakening about the way his company had been polluting, saying:

It dawned on me that they way I’d been running Interface is the way of the plunderer. Plundering something that is not mine, something that belongs to every creature on earth.

So I said to myself “My goodness, some day people like me will end up in jail.”

Another great example is Patagonia who make outdoor wear and mountain climbing gear, donate 1% of their revenue or 10% of their profits, whichever is greater, to environmental causes chosen by their employees.

But aside from financial gains, I believe that being environmentally focused has one other huge benefit for companies today: It makes employees happy. Here are five reasons why.

5: It gives us a sense of pride
Knowing that your work made a group of already wealthy investors a little richer may not be a huge source of personal pride, but knowing that your work made the world a little cleaner, or the environment a little safer or helped reduce C02 emissions can be.

Working for a company that has not only a positive bottom line but also a positive impact on the world feels good and makes us happy at work.

4: It creates a stronger bond with the company
Having that sense of pride means we can more easily identify with the company and feel like we belong there. This also contributes to happiness at work.

3: Employees can take action
Corporate environmental initiatives always work best when employees can involve themselves directly. Patagonia for instance, lets employees take time off work to work on environmental projects, and taking action for something you believe in, makes you happy.

2: We make a positive difference
It also lets us make a difference. If employees can get involved where they are and contribute to the environment through their ideas, energy, knowledge, skills or passion, they can contribute actively to a worthy cause.

1: It’s the right thing to do
It is just not right for companies to consume more natural resources than strictly necessary. It is not right to pollute, when there are other non-toxic ways to produce. Working for an organization that gets this, and chooses to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing, makes us happy at work.

So companies that take the environment seriously can not only make more money, they can also make their employees happy at work and reap all the benefits that happy workplaces experience, like increased innovation, better customer service and higher profits!

So try it out in your workplace: What could YOU do for the environment?

This post is part of the Blog Action Day

The Happy At Work Group on flickr is alive and pictures of people enjoying their work keep ticking in. Here are some great recent ones:

Jonas Cronfeld posted a creative way to be happy at work: work in your underwear!

The Canton Public Library observed international talk-like-a-pirate-day like this:

And of course, a Nintendo Wii never hurts as team viget demonstrate:

Remember, you too can join the group and post pictures of happy people at work.

Related:

• More pictures of happiness at work.
• Search for “happy at work” on flickr.