No workplace is perfect. Even the happiest workplaces in the world have problems. But great workplaces are good at finding and solving their problems.
If we want to build happy and successful workplaces, we can’t only focus on doing good things for employees, we need to be focused and strategic about identifying and fixing any problems employees see.
In this free webinar we showed how to do it. Content includes:
Why it’s not just enough to do more good things for employees – we need to address their problems too
How to identify and solve problems in the workplace
How to handle problems without losing sight of the good things in the workplace
Great examples from happy workplaces around the world
You can think what you want about Trump’s tariffs. Is it a genius 4-D chess move or a colossal blunder based on a fundamental misunderstanding of economics?
Whatever your opinion, no one can deny that the tariffs have led to massive uncertainty in workplaces all over the world. Stock prices are cratering. Some countries are implementing counter-tariffs. Companies like Volkswagen have paused all exports to the US and announced layoffs.
On the one hand, this is absolutely a tough situation for many workplaces around the world in all kinds of industries. On the other hand, instability and uncertainty have become more the norm than the exception here in the 21st century where it feels like the business world lurches from one massive crisis to the next: The dot-com bust, the financial crisis, Covid and now this.
Even if the tariffs have now been postponed, are you willing to bet that there won’t come a new disruption to businesses again soon? Or maybe several in a row?
Which raises the question: How does a company best weather a storm?
And it’s clear what companies normally do: Slash costs and lay off staff. Until the crisis is over and the numbers look more reassuring, all talk of being a good workplace is put on hold and no jobs are safe.
The economic downturn we may be entering is setting off alarm bells and panicked responses in many leaders. If you can keep your head on straight, you have a unique chance to steer clear of three classic blunders that many of your competitors are planning to commit.
Blunder #1: “Times are tough, so we’re cutting back on all expenses on employees!”
You start by decimating the education budget and then you continue by cutting social events, the free coffee, and everything else that is seen as “superfluous luxuries.”
A Danish company decided to cancel the annual company Christmas party due to tough times. They saved about 100 bucks per employee, but it cost them dearly – very dearly – in hassle, negativity and trouble from employees who had been looking forward to the party. It is not difficult to calculate how much money the company saves by cancelling a party or the free coffee. But have you calculated what it might cost?
And if you are forced to save money, it does not have to be worse because it is cheaper. Accenture Denmark had a tough year in 2003 and was forced to rethink the annual company summer party. Normally it was a big affair held at some fancy restaurant or hotel. That was completely out of the question in 2003, so what could you do?
They held the party in the office instead and had the brilliant idea of having the company’s partners (i.e. co-owners) staff the bar. At first, the partners weren’t very keen on it. They were known more for their long work hours, dark suits, and business manners than for their abilities as party animals.
The party committee cornered a few senior partners and got their support, which convinced the others to give it a try. The party was a hit! Not only was it more fun than traditional parties, but suddenly the partners were available to all the employees who could just go up to the bar and order a gin and tonic from them. The employees loved it and, perhaps most surprisingly, the partners loved it. They had to be forced out of the bar when their shift was over!
So it can actually be an advantage to have to save money – as long as you put good ideas and creativity into making sure that it is still fun for your employees to go to work.
Crisis blunder #2: Layoffs
The other classic crisis blunder is mass layoffs. In the early 2000s Southwest Airlines was the third largest airline in the world and the most profitable. After September 11, 2001, the entire travel industry was extremely hard hit, and many airlines quickly laid off 20% of their staff.
This presented Southwest with a challenge. They had never had a mass layoff in the company’s history, and they would go to great lengths to avoid one. Top management held an emergency meeting at their headquarters in Dallas, where they drank buckets of coffee and analyzed potential cost-cutting plans. They first scrapped a number of growth plans, deliveries of new aircraft and a renovation of the headquarters. But they rejected any idea of mass layoffs.
Their then-CEO James F. Parker said, “We are willing to suffer damage, even to the stock price, to protect the jobs of our employees.” The result was that Southwest was the only airline in the industry to emerge from 2001 with a profit. At the same time, they created an unprecedented level of loyalty, motivation and job satisfaction among their employees, which continues to give them a competitive advantage.
Frederick Reicheld confirms this line of thinking in his book The Loyalty Effect, where he states, among other things, that mass layoffs “only deepen the crisis. They destroy employee trust, repel customers, and slow down growth.”
Southwest Airlines has since turned into a poor example. A capital fund bought a significant number of shares in the company, put their representatives on the board of directors and have now forced the company to do their first layoffs ever with totally predictable results: Employee engagement is gone and even many loyal customers are abandoning the airline.
In many companies, it’s a pure reflex: The crisis is coming, so they get rid of some people and cut back on everything that’s fun. It feels really good here and now because it gives the illusion of action, but in the long run it hurts the company’s competitiveness and the bottom line.
In this video I go over all the research on why layoffs actually make a company take longer to recover from a crisis.
Of course, sometimes a company is in such dire straits that layoffs are unavoidable. Then what do you do?
Hal Rosenbluth had made a provocative decision: As CEO of Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency employing 6.000 people, he decided that his company would put the employees first. Where other companies aim first to satisfy customers or investors, Rosenbluth made it their first priority to make their employees happy.
The results were fantastic. Record growth, record profits and, most importantly, customers raved about the service they got from Rosenbluth’s happy employees. Hal Rosenbluth explained the company’s approach in a book whose title elegantly sums up his philosophy: “Put The Customer Second – Put Your People First And Watch’em Kick Butt”.
A company’s commitment to its values is most thoroughly tested in adversity and Rosenbluth hit its share of adversity right after 9/11. Overnight, corporate travel was reduced to a fraction of its former level and it recovered more slowly than anyone predicted.
Rosenbluth tried everything in their power to avoid layoffs. They cut expenses. Staff took pay cuts and so did managers and executives. But in the end they had to face it: Layoffs were inevitable and they decided to fire 1.000 out their 6.000 employees. How do you handle this situation in a company that puts its people first?
In his book’s most moving chapter, an epilogue written after 9/11, Hal Rosenbluth explains that though layoffs don’t make employees happy, not doing the layoffs and then going bankrupt at a later date would have made even more people even more unhappy.
Hal Rosenbluth recounts how he wrote a letter to the organization explaining the decision and the thinking behind it in detail. The result was amazing: People who’d been laid off streamed into Hal’s office, many in tears, telling him they understood and thanking him for their time at the company.
Rosenbluth’s letter also contained a pledge: That those remaining at the company would do everything they could to bring the company back on track so they could rehire those who’d been laid off. Six months later, they’d hired back 500 out of the 1.000 and the company was solidly on its way to recovery.
Blunder #3: Giving up on employee happiness
Crisis blunder number 3 is very simple: Giving up. Many people believe that when a crisis hits a company, it becomes impossible to create job satisfaction.
Don’t fall into that trap. It’s precisely when a crisis hits that your company needs everyone to do their best, and studies document that happy employees are more innovative, efficient, loyal, and motivated. So cut back on everything else, but don’t cut back on employee happiness.
Of course it’s easier to be happy when everything is going swimmingly, but people can still be happy at work in a crisis. It takes determination and focus, but it can be done. Surprisingly, a crisis can make people happy at work, provided that it becomes a reason for people to focus and pull together – rather than an excuse to give up.
How do we create employee happiness in a crisis?
Economist Paul Romer has wisely said that “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Companies that can maintain their focus on employee happiness in hard times can not only weather a storm better, they can come out of tough times stronger and with even higher levels of productivity, innovation and employee engagement.
1: Create and maintain positive workplace relationships
Good workplace relationships are the foundation of happiness at work and in hard times we need more than ever to feel that the people we work with see us, support us and care about us.
We know from a tremendous amount of research than when people feel alone and isolated, it really hurts their mental health, happiness and resilience.
So in hard times it is especially important for managers to take time to check in with their employees, listen to them, help them and generally show them that they are valued.
2: Appreciate employees for the great work they do
In tough times, individual employees and teams are still doing their best and working hard. Company results are down because of the latest global crisis, not because of a lack of effort from employees.
And managers should recognize those efforts and clearly
If employees experience that their hard work goes unnoticed and unappreciated because the company is not achieving its financial goals (due to the market, not due to their work), they quickly lose all motivation and pride in their work.
3: Communicate, communicate, communicate
Employees deserve to know exactly what’s going on – the good and the bad. Leadership
That’s exactly what they did at Xilinx when they were facing the company’s biggest crisis ever.
CEO Wim Roelandts organized meetings with his entire management staff and the managers below them as well. He knew, that when employees had questions, they wouldn’t come to him or the VPs, they would come to the managers closest to them, so it was important that they knew what was happening and remained optimistic.
This is not easy, as Wim readily admits. “I didn’t know any more than anybody else what was coming and so the tendency is to close your office door and don’t talk to anybody because if you talk with someone, they can ask questions that you don’t know the answers to.
But that’s actually the wrong thing to do, you have to get out there. You have to talk with people and even more important you have to force your management to get out and talk, talk to people, tell them when you don’t know but also tell them all the things you know and good friend to give people some hope that things will get better soon.”
Incidentally, these types of events also help maintain workplace relationships because they give people a chance to connect and talk openly.
The upshot
Every single company in the world is going to face tough times. And not just once but again and again.
And when that happens, most companies fall into crisis mode and abandon all attempts to be good workplaces.
This is a mistake. Not only does that hurt employees, research shows that it actually makes the company recover more slowly. Or not at all. Losing employee loyalty and innovation can absolutely kill a workplace.
The best workplaces on the other hand find a way to keep employees happy and productive in tough times and they can not only survive a crisis, they can emerge stronger, more profitable and with more loyal and engaged employees than before the crisis.
That’s what happened at Xilinx. I asked CEO Wim Roelandty what his proudest moment in the whole process was and he said that one day, about two years after the crisis when Xilinx was back on track, Wim was just arriving at the office when he was approached by a female employee who happened to arrive at the same time.
She told him this story:
“My husband got laid off and so yesterday evening we had a family meeting with the children. We had to tell them that their father had been laid off and that we had to do some savings and had to be very careful how we spend money, to make sure that we get through this tough time until dad finds a job again.” One of my children asked ‘but mom what is going to happen if you get laid off’. and I was so proud to say that I work at Xilinx and Xilinx doesn’t lay off people.”
Your take
What do you think? How is your workplace handling the current uncertainty? Is there any attempt to keep employees happy and productive or has that been left by the wayside?
How do we make remote work work? What are the specific, effective ways to ensure that employees can still do great work and connect with each other even though they’re not in the office in person all the time?
And how do we convince company leadership that remote work is good for business in a time where many companies are forcing people back to the office? We’ll reveal all about that in our next free webinar. Content includes:
The most relevant research around remote work and employee happiness and productivity
How to define and preserve the company culture when people are not in the office full time
5 innovative tips that make remote work work
Great examples from happy remote workplaces from around the world
Time: Wednesday April 2nd 2025, 3PM CET / 9AM ET.
We’ll keep the whole thing snappy, informative and fun and be done in just half an hour. Read more and sign up here.
Jamie Dimon became the latest billionaire to CEO to rail against remote work and seek to force employees back into the office full time.
He went on an angry rant in a JPMorgan Chase town hall meeting where he claimed that being together in the office is the ONLY way to be creative and productive because there you can communicate and collaborate in person.
He also rejected a petition signed by thousands of his employees looking to preserve hybrid work, saying that he didn’t care how many people signed it and adding this:
Now, you have a choice. You don’t have to work at JP Morgan. So the people of you who don’t want to work at the company, that’s fine with me. I’m not mad at you. Don’t be mad at me. It’s a free country.
But here’s what Jamie’s ignoring: While there are definitely some advantages to in-office work he’s completely forgetting that even when employees are physically present in the office, most coordination and collaboration still happens over virtual channels like email, chat, phone calls, discord, slack, zoom or whatever.
You don’t go to a coworker’s desk and interrupt their workflow every time you need help with something. You don’t call a meeting every time you have a question. You don’t go to your manager’s office every time you need to make a decision. Or at least, I really, really hope you don’t!
So when some people rail against remote work arguing that there’s just no way people can collaborate well and be productive, they’re completely ignoring just how virtual the physical office already is.
The most hilarious part of Dimon’s rant is that he has since apologized for it. Not for maligning his remote workers. Not for claiming that they’re all slacking when they work from home. No – he apologized for cursing.
Jamie, Jamie, Jamie… the problem was not you dropping some F-bombs. The problem was your complete inability to trust your employees and to recognize that there are more ways of working effectively than just yours.
What does it say about me that out of the (literally) hundreds of business books I’ve read, two of my all-time favorites have the word “ass” in the title?
Do I just have a juvenile sense of humor? Do I tend to enjoy profanity? Do I like it when people are brave enough to stick out from the crowd? Guilty on all counts!
Almost 20 years ago Stanford professor Bob Sutton wrote “The No Asshole Rule” and in March Garry Ridge’s new book “Any Dumbass Can Do It” is coming out and I was lucky enough to get to read an advance copy.
In some ways these two books are polar opposites. The No Asshole rule looks at bad management from a research-based perspective and reveals all the ways toxic bosses hurt us and gives tips on how to deal with them.
“Any Dumbass Can Do It” on the other hand is a practical real-life guide to how to be a good leader from a man who has done it himself for decades with spectacular results.
Garry was CEO and president of WD-40 Company for over 25 years, and is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego, where he teaches the principles and practices of corporate culture in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership program.
I probably don’t need to talk too much about the company. I’m willing to bet that somewhere in your home there is a blue and yellow can of WD-40 – I know exactly where mine is! But with Garry at the helm it grew to a multibillion-dollar company while maintaining a culture where 97% of employees say they love to work.
I have a special insight when reviewing this book because I have seen the results first hand. Garry and I first met 20 years ago and have since then spoken at the same events many times. I invited him to speak at one of my conferences and he brought me in to present to his leadership class. I also got to tour the WD-40 facilities and see for myself all of the amazing initiatives that build and sustain their culture.
Watch Garry’s amazing speech at my conference.
When you read “Any Dumbass Can Do It” (and you absolutely should) you will get access to so many of Garry’s ideas and tools that you can apply in your own leadership. He has been there and generously shares exactly how you can do it for yourself. You’ll get ideas both for building a better culture in your own organization and for how to connect better to your customers’ needs and build an inspiring external brand.
All of these ideas are gold but for me, the deepest value of this book comes from its most foundational message: That we are all just here in this world to make each other happy and if we can build a business based on that, then employees will be happier and the company will be much more successful.
It’s a rare business book that explicitly uses the H-word (Happy) but in this book it shines through every page. The book is also highly readable and at times hilarious, which only makes me like it even more.
The management guru Warren Bennis once said this:
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born – that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not.
That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
I could not agree more. Any leader willing to put in the effort can turn their organization into a happy and successful culture. And using all the many many fantastic tips in Garry’s book means that even a dumbass can do it.
All companies want their employees to be motivated but traditional tools like rewards and punishment just don’t work very well. In fact, they usually backfire. So how do we REALLY motivate employees?
Companies tend to massively undervalue the importance of good workplace relationships. That’s a mistake because the research clearly shows that organizations that foster good relationships get better results, because people like each other, trust each other, work better together and communicate better.
Watch my latest webinar and get 10 tips for how to avoid this and how to keep all your happiness initiatives going strong. Content includes:
The most relevant research on workplace relationships
All the business advantages of good workplace relations
How to create and maintain them – including what both executives, managers and employees can do
Great examples from some of the world’s happiest workplaces
It feels like everybody is always busy at work these days.
Many workplaces keep putting their employees under massive time pressure. This happens when:
Employees are routinely expected to increase their productivity year after year with little or no additional support, training or resources.
A company is growing and taking on new clients/projects without a matching increase in staff and resources.
An organization lays off staff but expects the reduced staff to the same amount of work.
Schedules are filled to near capacity with meetings and tasks before the work week even starts, leaving no time for ad-hoc or unexpected tasks.
Companies think that these actions create a burning platform that pressures employees to work effectively and creatively towards the company’s goals, but in this webinar we will show that the truth is the opposite: Always being busy reduces employees’ cognitive resources and makes it much harder for them to do their jobs well.
In this video we show exactly how damaging constant busyness is. Content includes:
The most relevant research behind busyness
How constantly being busy actually lowers productivity
5 ways to avoid constant busyness
Great examples from some of the world’s happiest workplaces
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.
