The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • Happy at work at DFD

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    Work-Life BalanceThis week’s theme on the blog is work-life balance in honor of the Danish National Work-Life Balance week. Read my previous posts on the topic.

    I was at a party last saturday, and even when there I could’t stop talking about happiness at work. How’s that for not being able to separate work and “free time” :o)

    Which was great ’cause I met a lady who works for De Forenede Dampvaskerier (DFD), a Danish laundry and cleaning company that employs 2.500 people. She told me that DFD has a rather extreme policy: Employees are hired to work 37 hours a week, and are expected NOT to work any more than that.

    Leaders make a round of the offices around quitting time to make sure that everybody leaves. You can’t answer emails or phone calls outside the company. If you consistently work more than 37 hours a week, you will be called to a meeting with your manager, who will ask what’s wrong and how they can help.
    (more…)

  • New speech format

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    I spoke about happiness at work at a conference yesterday, and that gave me a chance to try out a new, even more active format than I normally use. I had people visualizing happiness at work, practicing cheerful good morning’s and high-fiving each other. All in all, it was a great success, and I’m going to take my presentations even more in that direction!

    I was also interviewed by a journalist from the Danish business newspaper Børsen, and the article is here (in Danish).

  • Ask the CHO: What can companies do for work-life balance

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    Ask the CHOThis week the theme on the blog is work-life balance in honor if the National Danish Work-Life Balance Week, and Ben asks this in my first post on the topic:

    If I take vacation time (even if I’m just sitting at home), I get called at least once. And before the end of it, I usually log in to check email and make sure I’m not blind-sided by too much when I return. Unfortunately, in my position I give out my cell number to everyone when I’m on-call, so its widely known.

    So the question I have for everyone is this: What can companies do to help employees find that work/life balance? I know when one of my employees goes on vacation, I get a list of items that may be coming up that I’ll have to handle, and then I refuse to call the employee or give out any number to reach them.

    That’s a great question. What does your company do to help it’s employees achieve work-life balance? What would you like them to do?

    Write a comment, I’d really like to know :o)

  • Monday tip: Praise by email

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    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsYour mission for today is to pick 5 people that you think deserve praise and send them each an email praising them or their work.

    Not a loooooong mail, just a couple of lines and, of course, the email has to be specific to that person – you can’t send out a generic email to 5 people sayng “great work guys!”

    You can write something like

    Hi John

    I’m just writing to say that I really appreciated your input at our last meeting. Those were some really good ideas. Thank you!

    Best regards

    Alex

    And here’s the crucial part: At the bottom of the mail ask each of them to send 5 other people a similar email:

    I’ve sent an email to 5 people who I feel really deserve honorable mention – now it’s your turn. Think of 5 people who you feel deserve praise and send them each a similar email, including this instruction to pass on the praise. Let’s see what happens!

    Then stand back and watch an avalanche of praise rip through the organization.

    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.

  • Work-life balance

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    FamilyThis week is the national work-life balance week her in Denmark (read all about it in Danish), and in honor of that, this week’s postings will all be about balancing work and life outside of work. This is of course an enormously important skill, and any lasting imbalance in this area is likely to make us unhappy at work and in life.

    It’s been getting more difficult for many of us to maintain that balance for a few reasons:
    (more…)

  • Chief executive optimist

    Life is goodKareem Mayan emailed me to say that he couldn’t believe he’d never heard of Life Is Good, a company whose founders Bert and John Jacobs go by the respective titles chief executive optimist and chief creative optimist.

    I can’t believe I haven’t either, but now that there’s a great article about them in inc magazine, I have. From the article:

    Sixteen years ago they hawked $10 T-shirts featuring their own artwork from a card table on the corner, making themselves scarce whenever the cops swung past. “It’s a one-way street so one of us could always keep watch,” says Bert Jacobs, who is now 41, the older brother by three years. “We had a folding table so we could pack up quickly.”

    It’s great to hear the founders of a $100 million business saying things like:

    “Don’t determine that you’re going to be happy when you get the new car or the big promotion or when you meet that special person,” explains John. “You can decide that you’re going to be happy today.”

    John also points out that the assertion is, in fact, a modest one. “It’s important that we’re saying ‘Life is good,’ not ‘Life is great’ or ‘Life is perfect,’” he says. “There’s a big difference. We know that there are lots of bad things in the world. But overall life is good. You have to focus on the good things and help others to focus on the good things.”

    I agree, life IS good :o)

  • Don’t spend sunday night fearing monday morning

    Back to workAccording to this article, many people waste their sundays fearing their mondays.

    “I never sleep on Sunday night very well because I’m worried about going to work on Monday morning,” said one worrier. “My job is very stressful and you kind of have to gear up for Monday and getting back into that.”

    That’s horrible, and I can only imagine what having this experience week after week does to people.

    But mostly, I’m worried that the expert quoted in the article advices people to create some calming sunday rituals ie. to watch TV, play games or talk to a friend, but doesn’t say word one about fixing your job or quitting your job. If that’s how you feel on sunday, then it’s obvious that something about your mondays needs to change.

    Raise your hand if you’d rather spend your sunday totally energized and looking forward to monday morning, because work is just that much fun. That’s happiness at work right there!

    A great big thank you to Tim Raines for telling me about this article.

  • Podcast about motivation

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    PodcastThere is a lot of talk about motivation in the workplace these days. Both from managers complaining that their employees aren’t motivated and from employees complaining that their managers don’t know what makes them tick.

    And frankly, it’s no wonder, because there are some fundamental misconceptions about motivation in the business world. There are four different kinds of motivation, only one of them works, and businesses and managers rely almost exclusively on the three that don’t.

    That is the topic of my first podcast, which you can download here. It’s 23 minutes long and will take up 7 Mb on your computer.

    Please let me know what you think. Is the sound OK? The content? What do you like about it? What can I do better? What great podcasts should I listen to, and get inspiration from? This is my first podcast, but all the cool kids have’em and I wanted one too :o)

  • We have a winner

    Happy At Work BookThanks for all the great input folks. I have decided on a title for my first book. It will be called:

    … drum-roll, please …

    Happy Hour Is 9 to 5 – How To Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt at Work.

    Waddaya think?

  • Work less, do more

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    ClockHere’s a quote from the horrible book “You Can’t Win a Fight With Your Boss” by Tom Markert, the global chief marketing and client service officer at ACNielsen. Markert says:

    You can forget lunch breaks. You can’t make money for a company while you’re eating lunch . . . if you don’t put in the hours, someone just as smart and clever as you will. Fact of life: the strong survive.

    [If you ignore this] you might just end up as roadkill – lying dead by the side of the corporate highway as others drive right past you.
    I have always made a habit of walking around early and late to personally see who’s pumping it out. If they are getting results and working harder than everyone else, I promote them.

    Riiiiiight. Remind me never to go work for this guy!

    Here’s how you do it instead, from a comment from Sarah S. on this post about implied overwork:
    (more…)

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