This awesome Southwest Airlines flight attendant turns her pre-flight safety announcement into a standup comedy act.
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New speaker announced for the International Happiness at Work Conference: Jane Barnett-Roberts of John Lewis Partnerships
Some people think it’s easy for a small company to be happy but hard or impossible for larger organizations. Well, John Lewis Partnership (JLP), a British company that operates department stores and Waitrose Supermarkets is here to show that it is possible.In fact, JLPs ultimate Purpose is “the happiness of all its members, through worthwhile and satisfying employment.”
They achieve this in part by making all employees co-owners (i.e. partners), by sharing profits and by running the company in a democratic way that encourages participation in decision making.
Jane Barnett-Roberts is JLP’s Head of Democratic Engagement meaning that she leads a dedicated team who ensure that partners’ opinions from around the Partnership are heard and continue to contribute to the overall happiness of Partners.She will bring to life how the Partnership keeps this Purpose relevant and vibrant amongst its 85,000 Partners almost 100 Years after the business was first given away in trust to its employees.
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Inspiring video: The two major happiness traps you must avoid
One of the highlights of our 2009 conference on happiness at work was Dr. Srikumar S. Rao’s wonderfully inspiring and funny presentation which focused specifically on the two main traps we must avoid, that keep us from becoming happy. You can see the whole speech here.
And if you like that speech, you should definitely not miss out on this year’s Happiness at Work Conference on May 17+18 in Copenhagen. It’s going to be awesome – 12 smart and passionate international speakers will show us exactly how to create happier and more successful workplaces.
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Wanna win? Have fun!
The Olympic winter games this year offered an extremely rare event in sports history: An athlete won gold in two separate sports.
Czech snowboarder Ester Ledecka shocked everyone by winning gold on skis in the Super-G event and then went on to also win gold in snowboarding parallel giant slalom.
That’s amazing in itself, but what I love even more is her attitude towards her profession:
“For sure I want to win every race, but the first thing is to enjoy and to have good fun with what I’m doing and my sports.”
Her coach agrees, saying:
“The joy that she has for riding, the joy that she has for training and working hard is unmatched.”
What a refreshing change from the “Winning is all that matters” mentality.
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Congratulations to the graduates from our Chief Happiness Officer Academy in NYC
We just completed our 6th Chief Happiness Officer Academy. This one took place in NYC and had participants from 6 countries. One person even flew in from Tokyo to attend!
We had a wonderful three days with the group, where we explored the theory and practice of creating happy workplaces.
The participants loved it – the average feedback rating is a solid 10 out of 10. Here are some of their comments:
“THANK YOU! This was really fantastic.”
“The message was clear and the tasks were helpful. Group work kept engagement high and time for reflection was important.”
“I took away so many good ideas about creating happiness at workplaces and a theoretical background about happiness at work.”
If you want to be a Chief Happiness Officer, our Academy is perfect for you. See the upcoming dates here.
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The CEO of WD-40 Company: People Must Come First
In this video Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge, the CEO of WD-40 Company, explain why employees must come first. What a wonderful, enlightened vision for corporate leadership.
Garry will talk much more about that at our International Conference on Happiness at Work in Copenhagen in May.
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CEO Rich Sheridan explains how he created a joyful workplace
This is awesome: Rich Sheridan, the CEO of Menlo Innovations explains why he created a joyful workplace and how joy has business value.
Rich will talk much more about this at our International Conference on Happiness at Work in Copenhagen in May. See the program and get your tickets here.
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DHL’s CEO: Increasing revenues is meaningless. Motivate employees by creating a better world.
Solar charging station in TaiwanFinancial Times has a great interview with Frank Appel, the CEO of Deutsche Post DHL the clearly outlines his philosophy for motivating employees: Increasing revenue is a meaningless goal. When company goals are mainly financial, purpose is lost. The best companies are “driven by making the lives of customers easier by highly engaged employees.”
Appel has set up three initiatives for his 522,000 staff:
- Go Teach, where DHL staff educate disadvantaged young people
- Go Help, where they work with the UN to use the company’s logistics expertise to respond co humanitarian crises
- Go Green, where they work to reduce emissions to zero
Appel sums up his message like this:
“We cannot say, listen, ‘Our strategy is to make money and if we have time left then we’ll do something which is good for the society’,” he says.
“Our job is to do something good for the society, and to do that we have to make money, otherwise we can’t continue to invest.”
This is AWESOME. It’s a clear articulation of a philosophy where a company aligns the quest for financial goals with a clear mission to create a better world.
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I’m on the cover
Look who’s on the cover of the “Modern Management” magazine in the Czech Republic :)
Kudos to Monika Hilm and Michal Šrajer for building such a powerful movement for happiness at work in the region!
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Two of the funniest ways to create a happy workplace
There are many ways to create a happier workplace but this short video has two of the funniest I’ve ever come across: “Sexy Powersuit Day” and “The Lift of Love.”
This is from our International Conference on Happiness at Work where Tim Dorsett explained how he makes Innocent Drinks a happy workplace. You can see Tim’s full speech here.
If you want more inspiration and tools to promote happiness at work, you should come to our next conference on May 17+18 2018 in Copenhagen – it’s going to be AWESOME.
