The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • To err is human – to forgive is divine. And profitable!

    Forgiveness in the workplace

    A radio producer felt oppressed because her boss was constantly stealing her food –- right off her desk. So she made some candy out of EX-Lax, the chocolate flavored laxative, and left it on her desk. As usual, he ate them without permission. When she told this thief what was in the candy, “he was not happy.??? (Source).

    What do you do, when you’re treated badly or unfairly at work? Do you go along to get along? Get even? Something else?

    More and more people seek revenge at work when slighted. The number of retaliation charges has nearly doubled over the last eight years and more than 27% of all harassment and discrimination claims currently filed contain a claim for retaliation (source).

    But while getting even may feel good for a moment, is it really a good idea? From a business perspective, the answer turns out to be no.

    I was recently at an international conference on positive psychology arranged by the Center for Applied Positive Psychology, and among the many fascinating people I met there was Sarah Warner.

    Sarah presented a research project that demonstrates that workplaces with a culture of forgiveness had:

    1. Lower levels of interpersonal conflict and stress
    2. Higher levels of productivity

    Apparently, revenge creates stress and lowers productivity, whereas a culture of forgiveness makes a company more efficient and more profitable. So forgiveness is good for business. Cool!

    I’ve had a chance to interview Sarah about her fascinating project, and about why companies need to work on their ability to forgive people’s missteps.

    Sarah, please tell us a little about yourself
    I am an undergraduate student at Luther College, a university in the United States and I graduate this month! I have conducted research through my university on the topics of workplace forgiveness, interpersonal stress, productivity, and health. I recently presented a poster of my research at the First Applied Positive Psychology Conference, University of Warwick, UK.

    How did you come to choose workplace forgiveness as a topic for your study?
    Looking at the “other side” of the issue was interesting to me. By the other side I mean looking at forgiveness as opposed to revenge, which is emphasized most by many researchers. I wanted my study to be applicable to the real world, which is why I used a real, live workplace for my research. There is a misconception that forgiveness has no place in the business world and I wanted to show that this is far from the truth.

    What kind of workers participated in the study?
    The workers who participated in my research were employees at a manufacturing firm. Most of the employees at this workplace were in a factory environment, with the others in an office setting.

    How exactly does forgiveness affect interpersonal relationships?
    Interpersonal stress was found to mediate (act as the “middleman”) in the relationship between forgiveness and health/productivity outcomes. This means that forgiveness is related to health (both physical and mental) and productivity through the variable of interpersonal stress. In fact, the results of my study suggest that up to 40% of the relationship is accounted for by interpersonal stress. Also, forgiveness alone was strongly correlated to health and productivity.

    Did anything in your results surprise you?
    The strength of the results was the most surprising aspect of the study. I had predicted that this relationship would exist but the extent to which
    it exists was surprising. Forgiveness is related to many of the things that organizations are worried about today: Productivity problems, health insurance costs, etc. Organizations should think twice before they write-off forgiveness as having no importance in the workplace.

    What’s next? What are some of the questions we still need answers to?
    Because this study was one of the first to examine this relationship, more research would be helpful to confirm its strength. Looking at different
    types of workplaces and organizations in other countries would also be a great next step. The interesting question, especially in the business
    world, is how forgiveness can save an organization money (through increasing productivity, decreasing healthcare costs, etc.). When the discussion turns to saving money, organizations start to listen a bit more.

    Have you ever sought revenge on someone? Or are you the forgiving type? :o)
    Well, that is a fair question! I have to say that I am generally the forgiving type. Like most people, I have held grudges in the past against people who have hurt me. While it is hard at times, I try not to do to this anymore. It seems that when a person holds a grudge, it really ends up hurting them the most, not the person they are holding the grudge against. I believe this to be true, which is part of the reason I am so interested in this field of research.

    A great big thank you to Sarah.

    If you have any questions for her, write a comment, and she’s promised to answer.

  • Monday Tip: Forgive someone

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    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsThere’s a theme on the blog this week: Forgiveness.

    This is not something we see often in the workplace. It’s certainly not a practice that we speak off often, teach much in seminars, or ask about in new hires.

    But it is still a hugely important strength that some people possess and some don’t. The ability to forgive others, is one of the virtues that lead to a happy life.

    And that is why this week’s Monday Tip is to forgive someone at work. I’m sure that at some point, someone has done something that annoyed you, inconvenienced you or made you mad at work.

    Forgive’em for that. Right now. I’m not saying you need to forgive everyone who’s ever slighted you for everything they’ve ever done. No, no, just pick one thing that one person has done and then simply forgive him or her for that. Don’t tell them that they’re forgiven – this is not about them it’s about you. Just let it show in your actions and your behavior, that you no longer hold that against them.

    Choose one person and one act, and then forgive that person for that act. Once and for all, never to let that particular grudge return. Remember, you can still hang on to all your other grudges.

    Then notice how it feels to have forgiven. Then write a comment and tell me about it – I’d really like to know :o)

    The Chief Happiness Officer’s Monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.

    Previous monday tips.

  • Quote

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    One of the most thoroughly replicated findings in the field of social psychology states, the more you reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.

    – Alfie Kohn (Source)

  • Make your body happy at work

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    Move at work

    Imagine working closely together with a colleague who complains all the time: when you have been using the mouse for five minutes he will start bitching, and when you’ve been sitting for half an hour he starts yelling at you. This is the case for many people every day –only the colleague is closer than you think –it’s your own body.

    If you have office work, chances are that you regularly experience one or more of the following:

    1. Headaches
    2. Upper back and neck pain
    3. Lower back pain
    4. “Mouse arm??
    5. General stiffness and aching

    What’s this? You love your job so much. You jump out of bed in the morning shouting “Yes! I’m going to work today!?? And your body starts giving you all sorts of complaints. Why? Well, let’s take a look at what kind of work your body was originally designed to do.

    10.000 years ago, before the beginnings of any kind of civilization and through ages of natural selection, the human body (and mind) had become highly specialized in the art of hunting and gathering. Life was all about finding –and killing- food, and avoiding becoming food. If food became scarce, then you moved to find it elsewhere, living a nomadic lifestyle. Everyday, all day, nothing could be obtained without movement. Physical activity was essential. If you couldn’t move –you died.

    Nowadays most of us can easily live our lives with a minimum of physical activity, thanks to cars, elevators, e-mails, pizza delivery and the like. So why all these physical complaints and ailments? Your body should be happy to get off the hook, shouldn’t it? Well, it isn’t, and here’s why: Your body likes to move, and what’s more, it needs to! It is its nature, you might say. Strapping your body behind a desk with minimum movement for 8-10 hours a day is going against nature, on the physical level. And going against nature makes you… well, unhappy. Just like your mind grows dull without intellectual stimulation, your emotions wither away without love and companionship – so your body will start aching and complaining when you don’t exercise it.

    So, what to do, to make our closest colleague happy? Start moving! Here are some suggestions:

    1: Remember: moving is fun!
    If you have forgotten, then it is time to rediscover the joy of physical activity. Play more. Organize office chair races, or give lunch break dance lessons.

    2: Relax!
    If you cultivate a relaxed and easy-going attitude, then you are more likely to avoid stress. Without stress you will be less tense, and you are able to feel your bodily needs; also the need to move.

    3: Use any excuse to get out of the chair.
    Go see people instead of calling or e-mailing. Deliberately move your most used files to the opposite wall in the office.

    4: Move for no reason.
    For instance, decide to do phone calls balancing on one leg.

    5: Buy furniture that invites you to move about.
    Like elevating desks and gym-balls to sit on. Though apparently bean-bag chairs can go horribly wrong in the workplace:

    6: At least twice a week, do a proper work-out.
    Doesn’t matter what kind as long as you are sweating like a pig and having lots of fun. If you haven’t found your fun work-out yet, keep looking. It’s out there!

    The pay-off? Reducing any physical pains will of course improve your productivity and concentration. Also, more movement increases your physical energy, which in turn makes you more motivated and more positive.

    Happy moving!

    Nicolas KjerulfThis post was written by physiotherapist Nicolas Kjerulf (yes, that’s my brother!)

    Nicolas promotes health in companies in and around Copenhagen, Denmark. You can see his website here (in Danish) and you can contact him at nicolas@kjerulf.com.

  • Is your workplace happy? You can win a freezer full of ice cream!

    Dibs

    Ice cream company Dreyer’s (or Edy’s depending on where in the US you are) have just launched a campaign to find the happiest workplaces in the US.

    The happiest companies will win a fully stocked (and re-stocked as warrants) freezer full of Dibs bite-sized ice cream for a month. What is bite-sized ice cream, I hear you ask? It’s a package full of little bite-sized, chocolate-covered ice cream nuggets – so you don’t even need to get out a bowl or a spoon. Now that’s innovation.

    If you’d like to win, you must enter your workplace into the competition here and tell them what makes your workplace happy.

    I think that’s a wonderful way to brand your product, and I’ve long predicted this development – that companies would start branding themselves on happiness at work. In this case it makes sense for Dreyer’s/Edy’s, because they are themselves a fun place to work and because their product fits very well with this message. Think about it. Happiness. Ice cream. Is that a perfect fit or what?

    Which just goes to show that the idea of great workplaces is spreading and becoming more and more commonplace. I loooooove it :o)

  • Quote

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    The Lazy Way to Success“Your work (I hate to even say that unpleasant word) should be fun. Pure, unadulterated FUN. Your work (Oh, God, I did it again) should produce happiness. And lots of it.”

    – Fred Gratzon, author of The Lazy Way to Success.

  • Kids today – they get it

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    DogA commenter on my friend Bjarne’s blog tells this story:

    Not long ago my youngest son told me “I’ll do anything for money!”

    “OK, ” I said “I’ll give you 20 kroner ($4) to pick up the dog poo in the garden.”

    “Yuck!!” the kid said, “there’s no way I’m taking a sh*t job like that!”

    Kids today – there’s no way they’ll grow up and work jobs that don’t make them happy. That’s why companies today need to shape up and become great workplaces – or they’ll only ever be able to hire old, crotchety types who accept the idea of spending their days in unpleasant or just mediocre workplaces.

    I’m telling ya – the future belongs to the happy!

    In assorted news, I’m in the Danish media these days. I posted a link to this story at the fine Truthteller blog about a company that hired a happiness manager, and was interviewed for a couple of articles AND live on national radio. Cool :o) Article, article. The radio interview is not available on line yet, I’ll post a link later.

    Also, I’m still here – I’ve just found myself very busy this week. There are some good posts coming (including one on the top 10 things managers do that makes employees unhappy) as soon as I get my blogging mojo back :o)

  • Happy links roundup

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    CraniumHere are the best recent stories from the Happy Link Collection:

    Being nice saved this McDonald’s. A McDonald’s owner feels the squeeze when a Taco Bell opens next door. Instead of cutting costs, he fights back by going nice: “Bigari started giving no–interest loans to employees to cover things like new tires, rental deposits, medicine and emergency babysitters. He worked with a local church to help employees get daycare, and he started buying inexpensive cars at police auctions and selling them to employees at cost.”

    Why growth no longer makes us happier. “The formula for human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?” (txh Kareem).

    Small company hires a happiness manager. “The owner decided to only hire people who where happy! That’s right if she didn’t feel that you weren’t a really happy person, you didn’t get the job. She went even further and hired a Happiness Manager. His job is as you might expect, is to find ways to keep her happy employees….HAPPY!”

    Also: Happy at work in South Korea – The science of lasting happiness – Why happiness at work is like marriage – Schedule play at work – A 10-second experiment in negative thinking.

    And finally, you gotta see this video from game company Cranium, a truly happy company whose office is laid out like the board of their first board game:

    Find more links, vote on your favorites and submit your own stories, articles or blogposts at the happy link collection.

    And have a spectacularly happy weekend :o)

  • Some killer questions to ask in your next job interview

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    Job interview

    Imagine you’re in a job interview and everything is looking great – the job looks interesting, the salary and perks are about right, people seem nice.

    What you really need to know now is, “Is this a nice place to work?” Are people happy at work here? Are the managers good? Are the co-workers nice? Or is this company a branch office of one of the nastier levels of hell?

    You could always ask them straight out at the interview. “Say… I was wondering… Is this a good place to work?”

    But you pretty much know what they’ll say, don’t you? “Why certainly, dear applicant, this company is fully committed to the well-being of its employees. We strive to maintain a high level of employee satisfaction and employees are our number one asset.”

    Riiiight!

    So what questions can you ask to cut through the corporate b.s. and learn whether this is an actual, honest-to-god, nice workplace?

    Here’s what you can do: Ask the people interviewing you about their best experiences working for the company. Questions like:

    • What’s been your best experience working at this company?
    • When do you have the most fun at work ?
    • Who do you enjoy working with the most here? What do you like about them?
    • Which manager do you admire the most in this company? What do you admire about that person?
    • What’s the greatest thing your manager has done for his/her people?

    You can ask the person interviewing you. If your future boss is at the interview, ask her. An even better option, if at all possible, is to get a chance to ask some of your potential co-workers. Some companies make this possible, and that’s the best way to learn more about the company.

    What’s so great about those questions?

    1. Because you’re asking about people’s own experiences, these questions are hard to dodge or to answer with platitudes and corporate flim-flam.
    2. These are all positive questions. Even if the person interviewing you is a serial complainer, you will get some information on what’s great about this company.
    3. If they think these questions are just waaaay off base and inappropriate, that’s probably a good sign that they’re not into the whole “happy at work” thing :o)
    4. Answering positive questions like these puts people in a good mood, which means they’re more likely to like you and consequently more likely to hire you.

    Care to try it?

    Let me come clean here: I’ve only been to two job interviews in my life – both at the very beginning of my career! I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 15 years, so I have never tried to use them in this way myself.

    However, I have used the same type of questions in sales meetings (which are not too different from job interviews when you think about it), where they work very well.

    These questions will give you a much better idea of what a company and its people are really like. If good stories and great experiences start flowing and the word “fun” comes up a lot, that’s an indication of a great workplace.

    If they look at you like “That’s the weirdest question I’ve ever heard” it may not be.

    So: What do you think? Would it work for you? Have you done something like this already? Write a comment!

    Related:

  • Top 10 reasons why happiness at work is the ultimate productivity booster

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    Productivity

    Lisa was falling behind at work. Every morning she woke up nervous about the workday ahead of her. Every evening she went home thinking of all the tasks she hadn’t gotten around to.

    Lisa is a 35-year old engineer and project manager at a Danish IT company. With business booming, keeping up had become a struggle – she felt she had to run really fast, to just to stay in place.

    With her in-box overflowing and people all around her clamoring for assistance on their projects, she started to look at various productivity tools and systems and quickly settled on the one she’d use. As is typical for Lisa, once she’s decided to do something, she does it, and with new ways of tracking time, improved todo-lists and prioritizing her work, she did notice that she was getting more work done.

    But she still felt, that she could be more productive. While she was thinking about her next step, it struck her: Some of what she did, she hated doing.

    While she generally enjoyed her job, especially helping people plan their projects and advising them on the best ways to move forward, some of her tasks were administrative in nature. Tracking progress, updating various statics, generating reports, etc… . They didn’t take up that much of her time – but they were a lot less fun. Let’s face it: to Lisa, they were boring as hell.

    She talked to her boss about it, and they decided to give those tasks to a project secretary. This freed up a little time for Lisa, but mostly it allowed her to work on those parts of her job that she really liked. Consequently Lisa became a lot happier at work – and THAT’S when her productivity sky-rocketed. Now she had the energy to connect with her people and the creativity to think up and implement new ideas. Instead of feeling stressed and harried, she was optimistic and positive.

    While her productivity system had definitely helped her get more done, the productivity boost she got from being happy at work was many times bigger. Lisa is now working way less hours – and getting much more done. And most importantly, she’s enjoying work a lot more!

    If you want to get more done at work, the productivity gurus out there will tell you that it’s all about having the right system. You need to prioritize your tasks, you must keep detailed logs of how you spend your time, todo-lists are of course essential, you must learn to structure your calendar and much, much more.

    But that’s not where you should start. You should start by liking what you do.

    The single most efficient way to increase your productivity is to be happy at work. No system, tool or methodology in the world can beat the productivity boost you get from really, really enjoying your work.

    I’m not knocking all the traditional productivity advice out there – it’s not that it’s bad or deficient. It’s just that when you apply it in a job that basically doesn’t make you happy, you’re trying to fix something at a surface level when the problem goes much deeper.

    Here are the 10 most important reasons why happiness at work is the #1 productivity booster.

    1: Happy people work better with others
    Happy people are a lot more fun to be around and consequently have better relations at work. This translates into:

    • Better teamwork with your colleagues
    • Better employee relations if you’re a manager
    • More satisfied customers if you’re in a service job
    • Improved sales if you’re a sales person

    2: Happy people are more creative
    If your productivity depends on being able to come up with new ideas, you need to be happy at work. Check out the research of Teresa Amabile for proof. She says:

    If people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas that day, as well as the next day, even if we take into account their mood that next day.

    There seems to be a cognitive process that gets set up when people are feeling good that leads to more flexible, fluent, and original thinking, and there’s actually a carryover, an incubation effect, to the next day.

    3: Happy people fix problems instead of complaining about them
    When you don’t like your job, every molehill looks like a mountain. It becomes difficult to fix any problem without agonizing over it or complaining about it first. When you’re happy at work and you run into a snafu – you just fix it.

    4: Happy people have more energy
    Happy people have more energy and are therefore more efficient at everything they do.

    5: Happy people are more optimistic
    Happy people have a more positive, optimistic outlook, and as research shows (particularly Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology), optimists are way more successful and productive. It’s the old saying “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right” all over again.

    6: Happy people are way more motivated
    Low motivation means low productivity, and the only sustainable, reliable way to be motivated at work is to be happy and like what you do. I wrote about this in a previous post called Why “motivation by pizza” doesn’t work.

    7: Happy people get sick less often
    Getting sick is a productivity killer and if you don’t like your job you’re more prone to contract a long list of diseases including ulcers, cancer and diabetes. You’re also more prone to workplace stress and burnout.

    One study assessed the impact of job strain on the health of 21,290 female nurses in the US and found that the women most at risk of ill health were those who didn’t like their jobs. The impact on their health was a great as that associated with smoking and sedentary lifestyles (source).

    8: Happy people learn faster
    When you’re happy and relaxed, you’re much more open to learning new things at work and thereby increasing your productivity.

    9: Happy people worry less about making mistakes – and consequently make fewer mistakes
    When you’re happy at work the occasional mistake doesn’t bother you much. You pick yourself up, learn from it and move on. You also don’t mind admitting to others that you screwed up – you simply take responsibility, apologize and fix it. This relaxed attitude means that less mistakes are made, and that you’re more likely to learn from them.

    10: Happy people make better decisions
    Unhappy people operate in permanent crisis mode. Their focus narrows, they lose sight of the big picture, their survival instincts kick in and they’re more likely to make short-term, here-and-now choices. Conversely, happy people make better, more informed decisions and are better able to prioritize their work.

    The upshot

    Think back to a situation where you felt that you were at peak performance. A situation where your output was among the highest and best it’s ever been. I’m willing to bet that you were working at something that made you happy. Something that you loved doing.

    There’s a clear link between happiness at work and productivity. This only leaves the question of causation: Does being productive make us happy or does being happy make us productive? The answer is, of course, yes! The link goes both ways.

    Productivity

    But the link is strongest from happiness to productivity – which means that it if you want to be more productive, the very best thing you can do is focus on being happy with what you do?

    So how do you get to be happy at work? There are two ways, really:

    1. Get happy in the job you have. There are about a million things you can do to improve your work situation – provided you choose to do something, rather than wait for someone else to come along and do it for you.
    2. Find a new job where you can be happy. If your current job is not fixable, don’t wait – move on now!

    Related:

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