Our next Woohoo Academy in Copenhagen on June 21-24 is nearly sold out. We currently have 20 participants from 8 different countries, making it a very international affair.
So if you want to be a part of our in-depth, intense 3-day training about happiness at work, you should hurry up and book one of the last 5 seats.
And if you can’t make it to Copenhagen in June, the next Academy is on October 18-21 in New York.
How do you keep employees happy during a crisis, when outside circumstances create uncertainty and fear for the workplace?
Douglas Robar, one of our awesome Woohoo Partners, has some excellent reflections on this:
Sounds like for many employees the anxiety from the fear of change, the unknown, and of people they don’t know pulling the strings of their futures will be very real. Personally, I would treat this more as a pastoral counselling situation. How can you care for your people through this unsettled time?
In happiness terms, this is a time to focus on relationships. The employees (especially those on the lower levels) will want to talk. Perhaps organize meetings in small groups to talk openly about anything they wish to talk about. Speak honesty about the situation (the good, the bad, what you know, what you don’t know, etc.) and as you can, be fully transparent about your and the boss’ motives and feelings and hopes.
The idea is to build relationships with and among the employees, which is often much easier to do in the tough times when people will be more eager to share their lives and not just our jobs. Speak of fear and doubt, offer support and encouragement and strength to one another. The poncho exercise might work well to conclude such a meeting, to cement the reality that each has real worth and are bound together.
Relationships form in crises. Foster that. The results and the foundations for an even happier workplace are being laid even now my friend.
This is not only great advice, but it also fits perfectly with the science that shows that social support is especially important for us when we face uncertainty or external threats.
Unfortunately we are working against our natural tendencies here. When people face some sort of threat or crisis, we often react by becoming more selfish and by closing ourselves off to others – the exact opposite of what we need.
We currently have partners in 15 different countries and following the amazing work these companies do fills me with pride. It is beyond amazing to see so many people all around the world committed to promoting happiness at work. Here are just a few recent examples – all of these took place within the last month or so.
If you are looking for someone to help your workplace become happier and more successful, you should absolutely talk to one of our partners. And if you’re thinking that you might like to do the same kind of work, we are looking for more partners.
Our partner in Argentina spoke at an international conference on happiness at work. Here’s an excerpt of his speech:
Workplace To Be in Germany is tweeting 100 tips for more happiness at work:
Follow Annika here or see her excellent TEDx talk here.
One of our Dutch Partners, Happy People Better Business, arranged an entire conference about happiness at work in The Hague. Here’s an overview of the day:
Avive in Mexico spoke and exhibited at an event in Mexico City. Here are some pics from their booth:
Brett Leadbetter, our man in Australia, introduced these cards at a client:
Here’s his explanation:
I have just used this with a school where we presented a ‘Happiness at Work’ Day earlier in the year. I placed a pile of these cards anonymously, with a few gifts (fun stickers, pencils, erasers) for a teacher at the school, encouraging them to continue the ‘crime-spree’ – about to find out the results. We have used them in the past as a ‘unofficial gauge’ of the culture of a school – sometimes this tells us more than the official opinion surveys!
Staff don’t need to spend money, just come up with a way to make someone’s day – we’ve had cars washed, playground duties covered (a big one with teachers!), sometimes bringing someone a coffee or cup of tea on a busy day works well.
Another one of our Dutch partners, Toptimism at Work, made this beautiful video:
Bloch&Østergaard just revolutionized performance reviews for one client by changing them to a network-based model. Here’s how they did it:
Yesterday we killed the annual boss/employee appraisal-and-development-plan meeting for on of our clients, and replaced it with a network-based mentor-board approach for development and well-being for employees.
We wanted to remove the hub-and-spoke approach to development planning, and replace it with sincere care and advice from people in the organization, that knows what you’re working with, how you approach it, and how well the interaction with colleagues is handled.
We started two months ago by mapping the organisational network structure, (who do you work with, who do you get sparring from, who do you get energy from, and who do you talk to about private matters), from which we have established mentor boards for each employee, consisting of two people from the network, that you yourself have pointed towards in the net work analysis. The mentor board will then help/coach you and support you in your development, gather feedback from the network, and strive to nurture well-being. Results and relations must be discussed on each “board meeting”, and happiness at work is explicitly part of the templates and material.
Will it work? I think so. It was received by one of the most experienced male specialists in the group with the words “this is brilliant!”
How incredibly awesome!
Vega IT arranged a relay race for charity not just for their own employees but for all IT companies in Novi Sad. 184 runners organized in 46 teams participated.
Power of Happiness in Turkey just had their second annual international conference about happiness at work. I spoke at the first one but it looks like this one was even more awesome:
You can see all our Woohoo Partners here or apply to become one yourself here.
Our Woohoo Partnership program is constantly growing and we now have partners in 15 different countries:
Argentina, Australia, Canada, Colombia,Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, USA
See the full list of partners here.
We are looking for many more partners around the world so if you want to work with happiness at work, read all about the Woohoo Partnership program here.
Just got an email from our new Woohoo Partner in Canada, Danielle, who wrote that:
“I have been immersed in the Woohoo Partner Curriculum. It’s fantastic!! I am completely stunned by the quantity and quality of material you’ve prepared.”
Thanks, Danielle :)
If you might like to partner with us, read more here.
We just had our first ever Woohoo Academy – a 3-day in-depth training for anyone who wants to learn all about happiness at work – and it was a smash hit.
12 people from 7 countries came to Copenhagen for it. The group was a mix of happiness consultants who can use the content in their work with clients and CEOs and HR managers who can apply it to make their own workplaces happier.
Here’s some of what they had to say about the training:
The Woohoo Academy was, without a doubt, the best training I have ever experienced (and I’ve participated in many trainings). It was very well organized, and provided the latest research, practical strategies and opportunities to engage in many meaningful experiential activities. I also have to mention Alex’s passion and enthusiasm for happiness at work, which I found highly contagious. The training provided me with a much richer understanding of why happiness at work is vital to the success of employees and companies, and also with the how of creating happiness at work. I feel incredibly inspired and that my training dollars were well spent. I highly recommend this training to anyone who feels the calling to create happier workplaces.
– Danielle, Canada
I have attended many motivational and leadership courses over the past 20 years and never came out with so much clarity as after this course. It was interesting with so many nationalities, experiences and angles to the same topic.
The value vs time spend for me was immense as my entire organisation over 100 people will benefit directly.– Monika, Czech Republic
My main reason for going to the course was to got a broader perspective on happiness at work. I wanted to learn more about the theory behind joy, people, work, meaning and succes in businesses. The course gave me a lot of confidence on this topic and I’m convinced that within a copple of years this will be a very important part of leading a business.
– Tamara, Netherlands
For me, this Academy was a huge pleasure too. It let me take a deep dive into many of the things we’ve learned about happiness at work over the years, which I find incredibly fascinating, but which I rarely get a chance to share because it goes into more depth than most of our clients need.
Also, the group that came for this training were all smart, engaged people with a real passion for happiness at work. And they were all incredibly nice. As I mentioned at the Academy, you don’t get a lot of jerks coming to this kind of training. They’re probably across town at the business school learning all about business strategy :)
And finally – everyone passed the training and I got a real sense that the participants got the knowledge, tools and energy they need to make a real difference where they are – inside their own organizations or as consultants/coaches/speakers.
We are currently planning the next Academy for this winter and we’re going to have that one somewhere in North America. Sign up here if you might be interested and we’ll let you know as soon as we have the exact time and place.
Here are some of my favorite pics from the Academy:
Most of these pics are by Douglas Robar. More pics from the Academy here.
A short while ago we announced our new Partner program.
The basic idea is simple: You can get access to all of the materials that we have created and refined over the years with clients like LEGO, Microsoft, IKEA and Shell and use them to go create happy workplaces.
You can use all of these materials as an external consultant with your clients or you can use them internally with employees, managers and teams inside your organization to make it a happier workplace.
And we just reached a cool milestone: We now have partners in 10 different countries. There are now partners in Denmark, Norway, Turkey, Australia, Argentina, Colombia, US, South Africa, Bulgaria, and the UK.
That is AWESOME!
Would you like to join us? Read all about Woohoo Partners here.
Here’s an excellent article about happiness at work in Spanish written by Martin Leroy of Grupo Aukera, our Woohoo Partner in Buenos Aires.
If you have a workplace in Argentina that needs some happiness, he’s your man.
Our next webinar is for everyone who is interested in our brand new Woohoo Partner Program.
Here’s a short video introducing the program:
I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about this. You can read all about the Woohoo Partner Program here but the basic idea is simple: You can get access to all of the materials that we have created and refined over the years with clients like LEGO, Microsoft, IKEA and Shell and use them to go create happy workplaces.
You can use all of these materials as an external consultant with your clients or you can use them internally with employees, managers and teams inside your organization to make it a happier workplace.
We launched it 2 weeks ago and we already have partners in Argentina, Norway, Denmark, Turkey, USA, UK, Ireland, Australia and South Africa – and we want more from these countries and from all over the world.
In the webinar we’re going to give a tour of the program and answer any questions you have.
Date and time: Wednesday April 8th at noon US East coast time / 9am pacific time / 5pm GMT / 6pm Central European time.
This webinar will be around 30 minutes long.
The webinar will be held live on our youtube channel, so there is no login needed and no software to install. If you can watch youtube, you can join. There will be a chance to ask questions via chat.
Sign up right here:
Over the years I’ve been getting countless emails from people all over the world saying essentially the same thing:
“I love what you’re doing – is there any way I can be part of it?”
So far the answer has always been “Sorry, no” but starting today the answer is “HELL YEAH!” because the Woohoo Partner Program is now open for business!
The basic idea is simple: You can get access to all of the materials that we have created and refined over the years with clients like LEGO, Microsoft, IKEA and Shell and use them to go create happy workplaces.
You can use all of these materials as an external consultant with your clients or you can use them internally with employees, managers and teams inside your organization to make it a happier workplace.
We’re already working with our first partners in Istanbul to help them make Turkish workplaces happier.
Here’s a short video introducing the program:
I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about this. Our dream is to have hundreds of partners all over the world united in a vibrant, generous, passionate community working towards the vision of a world where happiness at work is the rule and not the exception.
Read all about the Woohoo Partner Program here and let me know if you have any questions.
UPDATE: We announced the program 2 days ago and we already have applications from potential partners in Denmark, Norway, USA, Australia, Argentina, Turkey and South Africa. Keep’em coming – we want more partners from these countries and all over the world!
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.