• International gigs coming up

    Alexander Kjerulf
    I kick it up on stage at a recent presentation

    I’ve been doing a huge number of speaking and consulting gigs here in Denmark this year (even though I recently raised my rates significantly), and now it seems that the international part of my speaking business is REALLY taking off too. Just these next couple of months I’ll be speaking at conferences and companies in Sweden, Turkey, India and the US. Wooo-HOOOO :o)

    Some of these events are open to the public, so if you’re in one of these countries, please consider attending. I’d love to see you there!

    Stockholm, November 6: The Power of Passion
    A really cool event arranged by the great people at 4good. I’ll be speaking about passion at work – how to find your passion and how to inspire it in others.

    Istanbul, November 28: The 9th Performance Management Summit
    I’m giving a keynote presentation at this conference for HR professionals on how happiness at work is the only reliable way to great performance at work.

    Indore, December 9: Indore Management Association – Unshackling Leadership
    I’ll be presenting on “How to lead with happiness,” ie. how leaders can be happy at work and how they can make their employees happy.

    You can read more about my gigs here.


  • 52 jobs in 52 weeks

    Sean AIken

    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.

    Sean Aiken

    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.

    Sean Aiken

    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.


  • Top 5 reasons green workplaces make their employees happy at work

    Green Companies
    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?

    Blog Action Day
    This post is part of the Blog Action Day


  • More pictures of happiness at work

    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!

    Happy at work

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

    Happiness at work

    Happiness at work

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

    Happy at work

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

    Related:


  • Happiness at work and Goal-Free Living

    Alexander Kjerulf
    Me on stage at last Friday’s excellent event

    Do you feel you have the right goals in life and at work? What do your goals do to you? Are you always chasing goals other people set for you? Are you one of the people who never seem to reach their goals? Or do you reach them – but forget to enjoy it?

    Last Friday (Oct. 5) Christian Ørsted and I arranged an event here in Copenhagen which was all about goals:

    • Nicolai Moltke-Leth (one of Denmark’s most famous business speakers) spoke about finding your mission in life
    • I spoke about goals at work and how your main goal should always be to be happy at work (duh!)
    • Christian spoke about finding the energy you need for reaching your goals
    • Stephen Shapiro spoke about Goal-Free Living – how to have goals but not be a slave to them

    Goal-Free Living, Oct. 5 2007
    Raise your hand if…

    The event was a smash hit and fully sold out – no mean feat considering that we planned, promoted and executed the whole thing in less than 2 weeks. We rock :o)

    Gareth Garvey took some amazing pictures of the event. Below are some of my favorites – click here to see Gareth’s entire photo set.

    Stephen Shapiro
    Stephen Shapiro

    Alexander Kjerulf
    Me

    Nicolai Moltke-Leth
    Nicolai Moltke-Leth

    Christian Ørsted
    Christian Ørsted

    Goal-Free Living, Oct. 5 2007
    Happy participants

    Goal-Free Living, Oct. 5 2007
    Happy participants

    Goal-Free Living, Oct. 5 2007
    Happy participants

    More great events to follow. The next one is on November 1st, it’s about happiness-at-work-coaching and it’s free! Read all about it.


  • I’m a cool friend – of Tom Peters’

    Tom PetersSo not only was my blog celebrated as an antidote for Adultitis – yet another accolade has been bestowed on me: I’m now one of Tom Peter’s cool friends. Other cool friends of Tom’s include Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Ze Frank and Dan Pink, all of whom are now in great company. Mine :o)

    There’s an excellent interview with yours truly up on tompeters.com, which manages to both cover a lot of ground (it gets faaaaairly philosophical at times – in a good way) while at the same time giving a pretty good overview of my thinking on happiness at work. This is mostly due to the excellent questions asked Erik Hansen who conducted the interview.

    The interview is introduced with these words:

    According to our new Cool Friend Alex Kjerulf, the Scandinavian languages have a word, arbejdsglæde, that means “work happiness” whereas the Japanese have the word karoshi, meaning “death by overwork” (We’re hoping you feel particularly Scandinavian today).

    So if you’re feeling Scandinavian today too, why not go read the interview.


  • My favorite award yet: Adultitis Antidote

    Adultitis Antidote Award

    Kim & Jason Kotecki are on a mission: They’re fighting Adultitis. Their blog Escaping Adulthood offers up strategies from childhood to help you treat Adultitis and create a life with less stress and more fun.

    And now they’re passing out awards to blogs that embody this spirit:

    When it comes to the blogosphere, an Adultitis Antidote is a blog exhibiting a childlike spirit that helps counteract the effects of Adultitis by using honesty, curiosity, passion and playfulness to encourage its readers to delight in the little things, dream big, and stress less.

    And they’re including my blog among the winners! Wooo-hooooo :o)

    Kim wrote to me to tell me about the award, saying:

    You are putting out content that needs to be heard. So many people drag themselves through their 9-5, only to spend their 5-9 recouping for another day. We see too many people living for the weekends. Your blog challenges people to step back and look at their jobs in a new light.

    So often, as adults, we don’t ask “why” anymore. Yet, children are always looking for answers. The content you are providing answers many of the questions people should be asking about their 9-5, but don’t. Happiness is the key!

    This is my favorite blog award so far :o)

    And I have to agree that most of us are waaaaay too adult about work, taking it much too seriously and creating way too much stress in the process, even though meeting serious challenges with a playful attitude sometimes gets you much better results. In fact, one CEO of a large Danish company always told her employees:

    Remember, work is just something we play at.

    A great big thank you to Kim & Jason for this award which made me very happy!


  • Southwest Airlines stories by Stephen Hopson

    Stephen HopsonStephen Hopson collects great business stories on his excellent blog Adversity University – many of which happen to be about Southwest Airlines.

    I’m a huge fan of Southwest myself – not that I’ve ever flown with them, I’ve just read a lot about them, including the excellent book Nuts! by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg.

    Here’s one of Stephen’s favorite stories that shows how employees at Southwest use their intuition:

    …a flight attendant from Phoenix named Debra Undhjem stepped in to help an elderly (87 years old) passenger.

    Although the elderly woman missed her plane in Oakland, she did make it to Phoenix only to miss her connecting flight to Tulsa. Since there were no more flights to Tulsa after the missed flight, the customer had no choice but to stay overnight and catch the next available flight the following morning.

    In light of her situation, customer service supervisors decided to put her up in a local hotel at the airline’s expense. That’s when Debra got personally involved.

    She decided to go beyond the call of duty and invite the elderly customer to her home for the night instead of putting her in a hotel room all by herself. Debra made necessary phone calls to relatives in Tulsa informing them the elderly lady would be arriving on the first flight the next day. The following morning Debra brought this customer back to the airport and waited with her until she was aboard the first flight to Tulsa.

    This is not only a touching story – to me it illustrates how employees who work for a happy company are much more likely to have the will, the initiative and the energy to do nice things for other people.

    Stephen also shares the story of how Southwest Airlines was invented by Rollin King, a San Antonio entrepreneur, John Parker (his banker) and Herb Kelleher (his attorney):

    One day, Parker was complaining how expensive and inconvenient it was to fly between Houston, Dallas and San Antonio and suggested that a new airline be started up. Rollin shared this concept with Herb who at first thought the idea was crazy but ended up talking about it over cocktails.

    In the final analysis, Herb famous words were: “Rollin, you’re crazy. Let’s do it!”

    “You’re crazy. Let’s do it!” – reminds me a little of Richard Branson’s motto: “Screw it! Let’s do it!”

    Stephen’s own story is pretty fascinating too – he’s a former Wall Street stockbroker turned motivational speaker, author and piliot. And he’s also deaf. You can read his story here.

    If you’re in the mood for a thrill, you should read his story of The Flight That Almost Killed me Part I and Part II.

    And for more on Southwest Airlines read their blog which is always a laugh and a half.


  • Revyr: Rating workplaces

    Happy at work

    What if you could figure out what a workplace is like – before you even apply for a job there?

    Revyr is a new website that just launched in beta – and Revyr lets you do just that. Employees can rate their workplaces and potential job candidates can then see what a company is like, based on metrics like pay, culture, benefits, csr and others.

    In my opinion this is a great idea – and a wonderful tool that will make it easier to find jobs we’ll love! I had a chance to tinker with the site a little, and while it is obviously still a beta, the user interface is excellent and the vision behind it is solid.

    I recently interviewed Jake Taylor of Revyr about the site and his dreams for it.

    I think an employee rating site is a great idea – one whose time has well and truly come. What brought you to this idea?
    In Australia and most developed countries, there is a massive shortage in quality staff at the moment this has meant that employees now have more power in the relationship simply because of scarcity. This has lead to extreme wage inflation but also companies realising that they need to treat their staff well, otherwise they will simply walk to a competing firm.

    The idea was founded because we realised that key stats about the culture of the business where not available. We think its important, both on an employee and employer level that there is transparency. At the present, new employers are being sold a blackbox and this can lead to incompatibility between these two parties.

    What is your biggest hope for the site? What do you dream of achieving with it?
    We have big dreams for Revyr. We want it to become the one and only destination for people researching prospective employers and also when looking for a new job.

    Our main hope for the site is to put pressure on companies to better their workplaces, to make people happy both inside and outside the office.

    Bringing transparency to the employment market, letting job seekers see what a company is like before you start work there, is obviously a great idea for potential employees. What do you think your site can do for the companies?
    We will add value to employers, so they can see in real time the opinions of their workplace. This can be used by firms to add a competitive advantage so that they can be ahead of the ball and attract the best possible candidates.

    In addition to this, each company listed on Revyr has every job available at the company (from a database of 5 million jobs) therefore we provide free advertising of these open positions, which will increase the number of candidates applying.

    However due to the nature of Revyr, the companies with the better overall score will receive more of a benefit (in terms of free exposure of job ads)

    You rank companies on ten factors including Autonomy, Benefits, Pay and CSR. Why those ten? Were there others that you considered, but which didn’t make the cut?
    We originally only had Culture, Benefits, Pay and CSR. However we realised that this was an insufficient gauge as to the quality of the employer – so we added the others.

    We used informal research by asking friends and family – what makes a good workplace? With this, we noticed that there where many attributes that make up a good workplace. The 10 we decided to use where the 10 most frequently referred to by the people we asked.

    I’m delighted that CSR, the degree to which a company is socially responsible, is in there. How come you included that one?
    One thing that we realised when doing our informal research was the importance people placed on the companies negative impact on the environment. We included it not only because people believed it was an important factor but also because it signifies that the company is progressive in nature. Companies such as Salesfore.com and Google are examples where companies can proactively lessen the impact they have on the environment.

    You know, I tried to search for Revyr on Revyr, but I couldn’t find it. Is it that bad a workplace? :-)
    We are a pretty small team here, with a workforce that is globally dispersed. We at Revyr don’t think of it as work :)

    And finally: What makes you happy at work?
    I think what really makes me happy is when I look back and realise that what we have created has had a positive impact on other people.

    Check out Revyr or read the Revyr blog.

    Related:


  • “Happy at work” on flickr

    Happy at work

    I recently posted some pictures you can find if you go to flickr and search for “happy at work”.

    Greg Knaddison saw that post and suggested that we create a flickr group where everyone can post pictures of people who are happy at work.

    No sooner said than done: Here’s the group. Please join me in that group (it feels kinda lonely being the only member :o), and post lots of pictures of people who are obviously enjoying what they do for a living!

    I’ll feature some of the best pictures here on the blog weekly or monthly – depending on how many pictures get posted.

    And thanks again for the idea Greg!



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