Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Chinese tech company Alibaba, has come out in favor of the so-called 996 rule, i.e. that you should work from 9am to 9pm 6 days a week if you want to have a successful career. For anyone doing the math that’s 72 hours of work a week. Add a 1 hour commute on top of that and there’s very little time left for your family, kids, hobbies, exercise and life in general.
His belief in this is unshakeable:
“I personally think that 996 is a huge blessing,” hesaid. “How do you achieve the success you want without paying extra effort and time?”
He also added that you can only achieve business success through suffering and sacrifice.
I realize I may be wasting my time here by going up against a belief that is so prevalent among business leaders, but there’s no way I can let that kind of nonsense pass and not point out exactly why it’s wrong. Here are 5 quick reasons:
1: Pointing to successful people that achieved success by working 72 hours a week proves nothing. What about all the people that worked just as hard but failed?
2: Many of the mental qualities that make a person successful at work are lost when people are overworked, tired, stressed and unhappy, including networking, creativity and effective decision making.
So permanent overwork does not lead to increased results and success – in fact it hurts people AND profits.
It’s easy to point to Alibaba and say “But they work really long hours and the company is successful. Check mate!” But that’s just correlation; where is the proof that they are profitable BECAUSE OF the long working hours? Maybe they would’ve been even more profitable if their employees were happy, relaxed and had lives outside of work too? The research certainly indicates that.
So why do so many people still believe this nonsense? As the psychologist Daniel Kahneman noted, it’s difficult to change people’s minds. Look at this picture:
Every horizontal line is perfectly straight. Don’t believe me? Hold up a ruler to your screen and check. OK, now that you know the horizontal lines are straight, what does your mind see? Bendy lines.
So here’s a simple tip you can try very easily: Open your next meeting with a round where each person shares something positive. You can pick one of these questions and let everyone share:
Name one thing you’ve accomplished since the last meeting that you’ve been proud of.
Name a person who has helped you since the last meeting.
Mention one thing you’re looking forward to at work in the coming week.
What’s the funniest thing someone has told you in the last week?
Mention something interesting you’ve learned in the last week.
Don’t spend a lot of time on this, just give each participant about 30 seconds to share something positive. If the group is bigger than 10-12 people, let people share in pairs and then let 3 or 4 people share with the whole group so it doesn’t take more than a few minutes.
It really works wonders for a meeting. One person told me this after trying it out:
Hi Alexander,
I have been reading your work for a few days now, and I cannot get enough.
We have 4 analysts on our team, who touch many if not all groups in our company. Our role often means our view is black and white in order to deliver results, which is often received in a bad light.
So, I tried starting a meeting with something positive. It was like the Jedi mind trick for convincing others to lobby for our interests!
My Sr Analyst was struggling to keep her jaw from dropping. No more than a simple ask of what is the funniest thing your kids have said to you lately. Everyone had a story, and we all laughed for a quick 2 minutes before getting to the agenda.
Just wanted to say, “Thank you,”
All the best,
-Grant
And it’s not only fun, it will also make your meeting more effective as this experiment shows:
Psychological experiments can be very devious, and this one was certainly no exception. The focus was meetings and the format was simple: Groups of people were asked to discuss and reach consensus on a contentious topic.
Here’s the devious bit: Unbeknownst to the other participants one member of the group was an actor hired by the researchers. The actor was told to speak first in the discussions. In half the experiments he would say something positive while in the other half he would start by saying something critical. After that he simply participated in the discussion like the other group members.
The experiment showed that when the first thing said in the meeting was positive, the discussion turned out more constructive, people listened more and were more likely to reach consensus. When the first statement was negative the mood became more hostile, people were more argumentative and consensus became less likely.
The researchers concluded that the way a meeting starts has a large impact on the tone of the discussion and on whether or not the group will eventually reach consensus.
I met a manager recently who claimed in no uncertain terms that companies should forget all about employee happiness and focus only on engagement. He argued that people can be happy at work without performing well, whereas employee engagement leads directly to better performance.
I’ve actually heard this claim a few times recently, but it is still wrong. In this article we’ll look at why.
But first let’s define the two terms. Both can be defined in many different ways, which will confuse any discussion, so here are the definitions I will base my argument on.
This is the first result that comes up when you google “employee engagement definition”:
Employee engagement is the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization, and put discretionary effort into their work.
And this is the definition of happiness at work that we use:
Happiness at work is the extent to which employees feel good about their jobs.
Both are clearly emotional at their core (the word “feel” appears in both) but the key difference is that engagement is more about the work and less about the person. It’s not really about how you feel in general, it’s how passionate you feel about your job, how committed you are to the workplace and how much extra effort you put in.
Happiness at work, as we define it, is how work makes you feel more broadly. It’s not about feeling good every second of every work day, but it is about experiencing mostly positive feelings about your job.
Just to make it clear: We think employee engagement is a useful concept and we are not arguing against it. We just want to argue that of the two, it is much more effective for a company to focus on making their employees happy than on making them engaged. Here are the four main reasons why.
1: Happiness is easier to sell to employees
Whether you’re looking to create employee happiness or engagement, you need your employees to be active partners in the process. This is not something you can do to them without their active and willing participation or (even worse) against their will.
Employee engagement, being directly related to commitment and effort, is a very easy sell to managers and companies. Every manager wants employees who are passionate about their work and go above and beyond to do a better job.
But seen from the employee side, it’s a much harder sell. When a manager states that they want their employees to “be more engaged in their work” or “give more discretionary effort” it can easily come off as if they are simply demanding more passion and work from people, without giving anything back.
On the other hand, when a manager sets a goal to create a happy workplace, the benefits are immediately clear to employees and it’s much easier to engage them in the process.
Ironically, happiness can be a harder sell towards managers, many of whom are skeptical of “all that happiness crap”. This video covers their most common objections and why they’re wrong:
2: Engagement without happiness is unsustainable
How engaged can someone really be if they’re unhappy at work?
Having worked in a number of charities, non-profit orgs and social enterprises, I can tell you that most of these employees are passionate and committed about their org’s cause but unfortunately a lot of the orgs don’t have a very happy work environment and it’s not uncommon at all to find super engaged yet super unhappy employees working in these orgs.
This is something I talk a lot about in my discussions with potential clients. I myself have been in this circumstance a number of times, being super engaged but miserable. And while I performed satisfactorily, had I been happy I would have blown the job out of the water.
A person can be incredibly passionate about their work and totally committed to the workplace, but still be miserable at work. I’ve seen this happen for instance when people are treated badly by their coworkers or manager or when they can’t do their job in a way that satisfies their own professional standards.
In this case, two things can happen:
The employee’s unhappiness can leech away any feeling of engagement, leaving the person not caring about their work.
So even if you want an engaged workforce, you still need to focus on making them happy because engagement without happiness is not sustainable.
3: Ultimately, it’s about performance – and happiness drives better performance
As I stated above, some fans of engagement argue that it matters more because it directly drives effort and performance. They also argue that employees can be happy but not productive. Both of these arguments reveal a poor knowledge of the research in happiness at work.
Sure, engagement leads to better performance – but given the definition above that includes commitment and extra effort, that’s almost a tautology.
Furthermore, we know from a large amount of research, that happy employees perform much better. Ed Diener, one of the world’s leading happiness researchers summed it up like this:
In the workplace we know that happiness causes more-productive and more-creative workers.
If you know academics, you know how careful they are about using the word “causes.” In this case, we know that happiness at work causes higher:
Productivity – happy people get more work done with the same resources.
Creativity – feeling good makes your mind more able to think of new ideas and approaches.
Intrinsic motivation – happy people don’t need constant external motivators like bonuses or threats; they want to do good work.
Loyalty – happy employees care about the company and stay longer in their jobs.
Discretionary effort – employees who like their jobs go above and beyond for the customers, their co-workers and the workplace.
So employee happiness has been shown to directly cause increased performance.
4: Happiness causes engagement
You’ll notice that both loyalty and discretionary effort were part of the definition of engagement that we presented above.
Given that (as we saw in the previous section) happy employees are more loyal and are more likely to go the extra mile, it’s clear that happiness doesn’t only cause better performance – happiness also directly causes engagement.
Of course, the effects are circular and engagement and happiness will cause each other. But given the results above as well as the fact that engagement cannot last in the absence of happiness, it seems clear to me that happiness causes engagement more than engagement causes happiness.
Gallup does a lot of great work on employee engagement and their Q12 survey is one of my favorite metrics. They also acknowledge that many factors play into engagement, including happiness / well-being, writing:
Leaders have to think about everything from culture to well-being to purpose and meaning — and make it all come to life in a personalized way for employees.
The upshot
Engagement is a great concept but ignoring employee happiness in the pursuit of engagement makes no sense.
At the very least, sustainable engagement requires happiness at work, meaning you can’t ignore the happiness aspect.
When do people feel “passionate about their work, committed to the workplace and give discretionary effort?” When they’re happy at work!
So if you want engaged employees, focus on making them happy and engagement will follow.
You will often see Denmark listed as one of the “happiest countries on the planet.” Interestingly Danes are not only happy at home, they’re also happy at work and according to most studies of worker satisfaction among nations, the happiest employees in the world are in Denmark.
Here’s just one data point: Gallup found that 18% of American workers are actively disengaged, meaning they are “emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive.” The same number for Danish workers is only 10%.
But why are Danish workers so much happier than their counterparts around the world? Here are five fundamental differences that explain what’s going on.
1: REASONABLE WORKING HOURS
I once talked to an American who had gotten a job as a manager at a Danish company. Wanting to prove his worth, he did what he had always done and put in 60 to 70 hours a week. After a month, his manager invited him to a meeting. He was fully expecting to be praised for his hard work, but instead he was asked “Why do you work so much? Is something wrong? Do you have a problem delegating? What can we do to fix this?”
Some non-Danes wonder if Danes ever work. Not only do Danes tend to leave work at a reasonable hour most days, but they also get five to six weeks of vacation per year, several national holidays and up to a year of paid maternity/paternity leave. While the average American works 1,780 hours and the average South Korean 2,024 hours per year, the average Dane only works 1,408, according to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) statistics. Danes also have more leisure hours than any other OECD workers and the link between sufficient leisure and happiness is well established in the research.
The difference to other countries is stark. Many companies around the world celebrate overwork as a sign of commitment. “You have to put in the hours” is the message in the mistaken belief that the more hours you work, the more work you get done. We call this “The Cult of Overwork.” Danish companies, on the other hand, recognize that employees also have a life outside of work and that working 80 hours a week is bad for both employees and the bottom line.
2: LOW POWER DISTANCE
In many countries, if your boss gives you an order, you pretty much do what you’re told. In a Danish workplace, extremely few direct orders are ever given and employees are more likely to view them as suggestions.
Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede has quantified the culture in more than 100 countries on several parameters, one of which is “power distance.” A high power distance means that bosses are undisputed kings whose every word is law. Danish workplaces–with a score of 18-have the lowest power distance in the world. Just for comparison, Belgium has a power distance of 65, China clocks in at 80 and Malaysia holds the world record at 100.
By law, any Danish workplace with more than 35 employees must open up seats on the board for employees. This means that Danish employees experience more autonomy and are more empowered at work. Here’s just one example: By law, any Danish workplace with more than 35 employees must open up seats on the board for employees, who are elected to the board by their peers and serve on an equal footing and with same voting powers as all other board members.
3: GENEROUS UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS
In Denmark, losing your job is not the end of the world. In fact, unemployment insurance seems too good to be true, giving workers up to 90% of their original salary for two years. In the U.S., for instance, losing your job can easily lead to financial disaster and loss of health insurance. This leads to job lock i.e. staying in a job you hate because you can’t afford to leave.
Simply put: If you’re a Dane and you don’t like your job, you can quit that job without risking serious financial problems, forcing companies to treat their employees well or risk losing them.
4: CONSTANT TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT
Since the mid-1800s, Denmark has focused on life-long education of its workers. This policy continues to this day, with an extremely elaborate set of government, union, and corporate policies that allow almost any employee who so desires to attend paid training and pick up new skills. It’s called an “active labor market policy,” and Denmark spends more on these types of programs than any other country in the OECD.
This lets Danish workers constantly grow and develop and helps them stay relevant (not to mention stay employed) even in a changing work environment. It also makes their jobs richer and more interesting.
5: A FOCUS ON HAPPINESS
Here’s a word that exists only in the Scandinavian languages: Arbejdsglæde. Arbejde means work and glæde means happiness, so arbejdsglæde is “happiness at work.” This word is not in common use in any other language on the planet.
Many people around the world hate their jobs and consider this to be perfectly normal.
For instance, where we Scandinavians have arbejdsglæde, the Japanese instead have karoshi, which means “Death from overwork.” And this is no coincidence; there is a word for it in Danish because Danish workplaces have a long-standing tradition of wanting to make their employees happy. To most Danes, a job isn’t just a way to get paid; we fully expect to enjoy ourselves at work.
In other countries, the attitude towards work is often very different. A few years ago I gave a speech in Chicago, and an audience member told me that “Of course I hate my job, that’s why they pay me to do it!” Many people around the world hate their jobs and consider this to be perfectly normal. Similarly, many workplaces around the world do little or nothing to create happiness among employees, sticking to the philosophy that “If you’re enjoying yourself, you’re not working hard enough.”
THE UPSHOT
I’m not trying to paint Danish companies as utopias for workers and their international counterparts as tyrannical hellholes. There are bad Danish workplaces and stellar non-Danish ones–Zappos and Google are two that I’ve personally visited and studied.
But studies have uncovered a number of systemic and cultural differences between Denmark and the rest of the world that serve to explain why Danish workers are on average so much happier.
This goes far beyond happiness. We know from any number of studies that happy workers are more productive and innovative and that consequently, happy companies have happier customers and make more money. This may help explain why Danish workers are among the most productive in the OECD and why the Danish economy continues to do so well.
If you search for “procrastination” on google you’ll find a massive number of articles on how to stop procrastinating and get stuff done.
These articles will tell you that there is only one reliable way for you to get stuff done:
Check your todo-list for the next item
Complete item no matter what it is
Go to step 1
The message here is that if only you had enough willpower, backbone, self-control and discipline this is how you would work too.
Well guess what: Many people don’t work that way. Sometimes you’re in the mood for a task and doing it is ridiculously easy and a lot of fun. Sometimes doing the very same task feels worse than walking barefoot over burning-hot, acid-covered, broken glass and forcing yourself to do it anyway is a frustrating exercise in futility.
Sometimes procrastinating is exactly the right thing to do at a particular moment. Sadly, this is largely ignored by the procrastination-is-a-sign-of-weakness, the-devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands crowd.
An example: Sometimes I have a great idea for an article, but I can’t get it written. I try writing it one way, I try another but I just can’t get it finished. Invariably, I end up procrastinating. Suddenly while I’m procrastinating, the idea I was missing comes to me and the whole article is suddenly clear in my mind. When I next sit down to write it, it takes no time and writing it is a pure pleasure.
I could’ve forced myself to write that article the first time around – if I’d had enough discipline! But it would have been a struggle all the way and the result wouldn’t have been half as good. I can just hear people crying “Well, your articles still aren’t half as good” :) That’s another discussion!
For me, procrastination is just another tool I use. A way to recharge and get ideas. The important thing is to procrastinate effectively.
Here’s how you do it.
1: Procrastinate without guilt
Do not beat yourself up for procrastinating. Everybody does it once in a while. It doesn’t make you a lazy bastard or a bad person.
If you leave a task for later, but spend all your time obsessing about the task you’re not doing, it does nothing good for you. So procrastinate without guilt.
2: Procrastinate 100%
Do you know those people who procrastinate from some important task – and all they can talk or think about is the task they’re not doing. Often to the point of obsession!
Don’t. Throw yourself 100% into whatever it is you are doing, whether you’re vacuuming, watching TV, reading, surfing the web or out drinking with your friends. Do it and enjoy it to the max.
3: Choose to procrastinate
Don’t let procrastination sneak up on you, so that you suddenly find that you’re doing something other than you should be. Instead, choose consciously to not work on your current task. Instead of fighting it, say to yourself “I will now procrastinate”.
This way procrastination isn’t something that happens to you, something that you’re powerless to control. As if it ever could be :) This way you’re in charge and procrastination is a tool you use.
4: Ask yourself why you procrastinate
There can be many good reasons to procrastinate:
Some crucial ideas, notions, thoughts may come to you only when you’re not working on your project.
Effective procrastination recharges your batteries and gives you new energy.
Maybe there’s something else you could be doing instead and procrastinating means you get it done.
Maybe whatever it is you’re supposed to do, turns out to be irrelevant or even a bad idea. Maybe the reason you procrastinated was, that your subconscious knew this before your conscious mind.
Or maybe – and most importantly – you just hate doing whatever it is you’re supposed to do and that’s why you can’t make yourself do it. Many people hate their jobs (20% according to some studies) and constant procrastination can be a sign that you’re one of them. In that case, take it seriously, and do something about it.
Working non-stop means missing out on all of this. When you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself why. Don’t just accept the traditional answer: “There’s something wrong with me, I’m a bad, lazy person”.
5: Take responsibility for procrastinating
When you choose to procrastinate, make sure to update your deadlines and commitments. Let people know, that your project will not be finished on time and give them a new deadline.
Procrastinate now. I dare you!
Procrastination is not bad in itself. Do it right, and it’s a way to be more efficient and have more fun with what you’re working on.
In fact, I challenge you to procrastinate this very moment. Pick a task that you should be working on right now, but where your heart isn’t really in it. Then, rather than work half-heartedly on this task, procrastinate fully and consciously as described above.
Notice how it changes how you think about your task and what it does for you when you procrastinate 100% and without feelings of guilt.
Yesterday I participated in the Copenhagen March for Science – part of a global movement to celebrate science and the role it plays in our live.
It was tremendously cool to march through the streets of Copenhagen along with hundreds of other science enthusiasts and it’s easy to see that it has never been more important to encourage the use of science in public policy given the challenges we’re facing (especially climate change) and the current unscientific and populist tendencies we’re seeing in some countries.
And the same goes in business. Many of the most widespread practices in business and leadership have been repeatedly proven wrong in studies and yet they persist. Here are some of my favorite examples of scientific findings that are being soundly ignored by many companies:
We are constantly blown away by the great work our international partners do to promote happiness at work around the world. Here are just a few recent examples.
Israel
PlusConsulting in Israel did a Workplace Happiness seminar for 45 HR managers from leading organizations. They presented a case study of a big retail company that they have been working with for the last 2 years, to train all their managers with leading with happiness tools, and many other happiness tips. They have also been working with the National insurance services’ headquarters to involve positive psychology tools like mindfulness, appreciative inquiry and strengths in their daily routine.
Switzerland
Florian Amstutz of PeopleUp in Switzerland did a presentation on happiness and change management for 120 managers from a company. He had lot of fun and the CEO was really happy with the speech.
Hong Kong
TGI Monday in Hong Kong have developed a workshop called Choosing Happiness at work which is dedicated to any employee willing to increase its happiness at work. It includes a lot of videos, good practices examples from caring organizations for Hong Kong FCCIHK – as you can see above, people love it :)
Nicolai Knudsen had a breakthrough in his work to make the Danish military a happier workplace when he gave a keynote at a conference for the organisation for personal advisors and colleague support, a voluntary organisation within the Ministry of Defense that helps people cope with personal problems, stress, offensive behavior, sexism, trauma and PTSD. The head of the MoD center for workplace environment health and safety was really inspired and had never seen that approach, despite having worked with health and safety in over two decades.
Japan
Mari Niwa from Ideal Leaders in Tokyo came up with a new way for coworkers to praise each other. In Japan people are a little shy, so rather than doing it in public, you can put up envelopes for each person and then people can praise you by writing a note and sticking it in your envelope.
Australia
Dr. Jenny Brockis recently delivered the closing keynote on Thriving@Work at a huge retail conference in Melbourne which was really well received and she’s now getting many more inquiries about this topic as organisations wake up to the need to improve their employees’ experiences at work to boost productivity, performance and overall happiness.
Slovenia
Paleta Znanj in Slovenia are wrapping up a 2-year project of rebuilding/upgrading organizational culture in one great and very successful small company (up to 20 employees, 25 years on the market) who needed help to cross the gap between financial and organic growth (high profits, low employee satisfaction), and to enter “modern age” of leadership. They helped align the company culture with their current and future needs, to make a shift from being profit oriented culture to being people and client oriented one and so to bring more happiness into their working lives and did analysis, counseling, team buildings, coaching, workshops and introduce a tool/system called the Growth Book.
There is currently huge interest in the 30-hour workweek in many workplaces . But is this just a pipe dream or could it actually lead to better results, happier workplaces and less stress?
In this video I talk to Lena Rübelmann and Juliana Wolfsberger who have written a masters thesis called “The 30-hour Workweek -A Promising Alternative for Knowledge Workers?” at Lund University School of Economics and Management about their findings. My favorite: Switching to a 30-hour workweek does not reduce output. People get as much work done as they did before, even though they work fewer hours.
If you want to know more, Juliana and Lena are happy to share their findings. You can reach them here:
Other companies are finding the same thing, including Toyota Center Gothenburg, who 12 years ago, went from a normal 40-hour work week to only working 30 hours a week – and found that employee happiness, productivity, customer satisfaction and profits all went up. At our2015 Happiness at Work Conference, CEO Martin Banck explains why they made that weird decision, how they did it in practice and what has happened since then:
The New York Times has a great article called “In Silicon Valley, Working 9 to 5 Is for Losers” that examines workaholism in startups. It even quotes one entrepreneur as saying “I rarely get to see my kids. That’s a risk you have to take.” I wonder if he asked his kids if that was a risk they were willing to take.
There’s an ingrained mythology around startups that not only celebrates burn-out efforts, but damn well requires it.
It’s not hard to understand why such a mythology serves the interest of money men who spread their bets wide and only succeed when unicorns emerge.
There’s little to no consequence to them if the many fall by the wayside, spent to completion trying to hit that home run. Make me rich or die tryin’.
…
It’s bullshit. Extractive, counterproductive bullshit peddled by people who either need a narrative to explain their personal sacrifices and regrets or who are in a position to treat the lives and wellbeing of others like cannon fodder.
These two articles do a great job of exposing the toxic overwork culture in many startups but I just want to add five few quick points on the topic:
1: If hours are all that matter, an entrepreneur working 80 hours a week will be beaten by one working 90 hours a week. Where does it end?
2: Many of the mental qualities that make a startup successful are lost when people are overworked, tired, stressed and unhappy, including networking, creativity and effective decision making.
5: Pointing to successful startups that worked 80 hours a week proves nothing. What about all the startups that worked 90 hours a week and failed?
Imagine starting your own company and ending up creating a workplace where you hate to work. How stupid is that?
On the other hand, employees of a startup where people are happy to work and have full lives outside of work, will be more productive, motivated and innovative, boosting the startup’s chance of success.
Even if working crazy long hours did enhance a startup’s chance of success (which it does not), it would still be wrong because it hurts employees physically and psychologically.
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