Category: Links

The more I look the more blogs I find that talk about happiness at work. It seems like there’s a regular groundswell of interest in getting love your job – or getting a job you love.

Here are some more of my favorites, that I follow closely and here’s my previous crop of Happy At Work blogs.

The Engaging Brand
Anna Farmery’s blog should be about branding, I guess, but she keeps writing great posts on improving work life and business culture. Check out 10 ways to bring fun to meetings and How to screw up successfully. She also does podcasts – the last one was with Dan Pink and she interviewed me for one this week which will be out next week – we had a blast talking and I think the result will be well worth listening to.

The Performance & Talent Management Blog
Max Goldman writes this excellent blog for consulting company SuccessFactors. He has a fresh, interesting perspective on all things HR.

Hello My Name Is Scott
Scott Ginsberg once forgot to take off his name tag after an event, found that it created an immediate connection with people and has worn one ever since. What a cool, friendly happy idea. Btw: He thinks you should set fire to your TV. I agree!
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I have found a veritable treasure trove of articles on happiness at work over at the Gallup Management Journal.

Here are a few great ones:
Construct the workplace to encourage interaction
You are three times as likely to have a close-knit group if the physical environment makes it easy to socialize.

Dilbert Is Right, Says Gallup Study
A national employee survey confirms that uncomfortable work environments do make for disgruntled employees.

Bringing Work Problems Home
Employees who aren’t engaged in their jobs are more likely to be unhappy in their personal lives too.

Can Employees Be Friends With the Boss?
Yes, according to research. In fact, managers who demonstrate care for employees have more engaged staffs.

There’s much, much more…

A great podcast about fun.

Two black T-shirts and you too can be a ninja at work. Team random at work.
(Thank you Amy).

Rob Paterson tells the story of silverorange, a company that sounds like they have a LOT of fun.

From the you-did-how-much-research-to-find-this-out department: Feeling good matters at work. Well, duh!

More great links about happiness at work here.

Here are my favorite blogs that talk about happiness at work. Enjoy!

The Lazy Way to Success
Excellent blog by Fred Gratzon on why hard work is overrated and laziness is a much better path to success.

Creating passionate users
One of the best blogs out there in any category, and many of Kathy Sierra’s ideas on creating passionate users apply equally to creating passionate workplaces.

Work Matters
Great thinking from Bob Sutton on leadership and organization.

The Play Ethic
About play at work and in schools.

Bernie deKoven’s FunLog
A great, great blog about play.

Slow Leadership
Excellent thinking on a much healthier and sounder form of leadership.

WorldBlu
Traci Fenton’s groundbreaking thinking on democracy in the workplace.

Anecdote
This company works with stories to create change and seem to keep one eye on happiness at all times.

Happiness & Public Policy
On happiness in society in general.

Have I missed any? Write a comment if you know a good blog about happiness at work!

UPDATE:
Added Here We Are. Now What?
Terry Seamon blogs on leadership, work, change and more.

Also added The Performance & Talent Management Blog
Max Goldman’s great blog at successfactors.com.

And I can’t believe I forgot Make it great
Where Phil Gerbyshak challenges us all to make it a great day rather than merely a good one!

Why happiness is overrated. It can only be a matter of time before companies appoint happiness action officers whose job it will be to patrol workstations with a clipboard: “Jenkins – cheer up or it’s a remedial, wellbeing residential workshop for you. Smith – happy enough!” (via). Heh!

Microsoft made two training videos with renowned business consultant David Brent (played of course by Ricky Gervais of The Office). Hilarious!
Video 1 – Video 2. (Via Mathias Vestergaard).
This is actually a great and entertaining way to get the message remembered – I might even be able to recite the Microsoft values now :o)

But the funniest fake corporate videos are still the Reebok commercials featuring Terry Tate.

10 things you could do this friday afternoon. I like number 8-10.

Oh, the dangers of being self-employed.

Russian employers are using stressovoye, stressful interviews, to find the best candidates: Throwing a glass of water in someone’s face is said to be especially revealing: the interviewee is considered to have strength of character and leadership qualities if they react aggressively. I think this mostly reveals something about the company and the interviewer…

Fred Gratzon explains how he lights his iner fire and sets goals: I come up with my goals in a most lazy and relaxed manner. In fact, relaxation is THE essential ingredient for this process to be successful. No sweat, no effort, no strain, no pain, no pressure, no aggravation, no commute, no bosses, no deadlines, no distractions, no work; just relaxing with a quiet desire to have a new goal. Then I play with my imagination throughout the day, every day.

Another post also wants IT people to be lazy: For example, you want an environment where sysadmins kick back and read IT magazines occasionally, because their run-of-the-mill administrative tasks (adding users, managing disk space, etc.) are all scripted and/or automated.

Bob Sutton writes about Lovaglia’s law and choosing CEOs: Rakesh found that when he asked corporate directors if CEOs are worth all that money, they reacted with anger and surprise, as if he had raised a taboo subject. He found that they had “virtually religious??? convictions on the subject, which led them to dismiss any evidence showing that CEO quality is not a primary and powerful cause of company performance.