In January I was in London to promote the UK release of the updated version of my first book (Happy Hour is 9 to 5).
I had many great talks and interviews but by far the best and the most interesting was the hour I spent with Brian Rose at London Real TV. You can see the whole no-holds-barred interview above. Watch it!
Almost every company talks about empowering their employees, but few actually do it an any meaningful way. In many cases it becomes a sham process, where employees are encouraged to voice their opinions and those opinions are then promptly ignored.
And the best (or is that worst) symbol of fake empowerment is the suggestion box. Many workplaces have one hanging on a wall somewhere. You can stick in your idea, but then what? Who (if anyone) will read it? Will it ever be acted upon? If not, why not? If it is, who will take credit?
It’s time to kill off the suggestions box and the coolest way I’ve seen to do this comes from marketing agency Quirk based in Cape Town, Johannesburg and the UK.
They have created a process that let’s anyone in the company suggest ideas, gather support for them and then have them implemented (or not). When I visited their Cape Town HQ I had a chance to see it for myself, and I think every workplace who wants to give their employees a voice should do something similar.
This flowchart shows how it works:
The first step is to post your idea to a board that hangs in a prominent spot in the office and get 12 of your coworkers to also sign on. If you like an idea, you show your support in a very low-tech way: you put a sticker on it.
Some ideas die at this stage – there’s just not enough energy or support behind the proposal. All ideas that don’t make it for one reason or another are displayed in The Graveyard:
Here you can see each idea that failed and why.
If an idea does get the necessary support, the person behind it writes a one-page proposal which is then submitted to Quirk’s EXCO, which is basically their top leadership team.
If they approve it, the idea goes ahead immediately and is placed on the “Ideas in motion” section of the board:
Ideas that were previously approved are shown on the “It’s happening” section.
Of course, the leadership group can turn the idea down, and if they do, they must carefully explain why they don’t think it’s a good idea. They can’t just say “No” or “Maybe later.”
But as you can see from the flow chart above, even if the leadership group turns an idea down, that need not be the end of it. If a person feels that this idea is still to good to ignore, it can be put to a debate and subsequent vote inside the company. If the idea is voted through, this overrides the EXCO’s decision and the idea goes ahead anyway.
Another thing they do on the board is highlight the costs of previous ideas, so employees know how much things end up costing.
I think this process is absolutely brilliant for 5 reasons:
1: It’s visual
It’s not just a bunch of documents or lines in a spreadsheet – this is highly visual which gives you a great overview. It’s also well-designed and looks pretty, which probably helps a little too.
2: It’s low-tech
This could also be done on the intranet or in an app, but I kinda like that it’s on paper and cork board and you vote with stickers. This also makes it very flexible. Also, a page or an app is on demand – that means that people need to be proactive to access their democracy (and apathy is a killer). This board is a sort of dynamic wallpaper – it sits in front of your eyes while you butter your toast in the kitchen – you can be as passive as you like – the democracy comes to you.
3: It’s fast
The process is fast. The leadership group have committed to addressing each idea at their next meeting and this means that ideas can get acted on while the energy is still there.
4: It has memory
The board is a great record of previous failed ideas (so you don’t have to deal with the same proposals once every 6 months from different people and it also highlights ideas that were implemented, so you can see that this actually works.
5: It’s transparent
This takes most of the politics out of these ideas. Getting your idea implemented is not about who you know or how well you can lobby for it, it’s about gaining support for good suggestions.
There is zero doubt that autonomy and control over our own situation makes us happy. The more we can meaningfully contribute to things we care about at work, the prouder and happier we feel. And that way the company can also better tap into the creativity of its employees and become more efficient.
So simply put:
Fake empowerment = frustration and cynicism.
Real empowerment = trust and happiness.
Does your workplace empower its employees? For real or in a fake way? If you have a really good idea, do you know where to go with it?
Photo credits: The awesome picture above of the suggestion box is from a train station in Moshi, Tanzania and was originally shown here. All other photos are courtesy of Quirk.
Discrimination of any kind is a barrier to happiness at work and in life and we would like to make this very clear: We are for equal treatment of everyone regardless of sexual orientation – at work, in sports and in life.
The Olympic charter says that “The practice of sport is a human right,” but more than that being yourself is a human right.
We would like to wish all the participants at the Winter Olympic games a great competition. We hope they have a lot of fun training and competing.
Hat tip to our friends at Symbiotisk for inspiring us and cooking up the rainbow version of our logo.
I’ve just returned from one of the most amazing speaking trips I’ve ever had.
First my company took a group of Danish business leaders to London to visit some of the best UK workplaces, including Innocent Drinks, WhatIf Innovation and Next Jump. The trip was massively inspiring and a lot of fun and the group learned a ton of best practices from these great companies.
After that I flew straight from London to Antigua&Barbuda to do two keynotes for Canadian software company FreeBalance. One speech was for their steering committee and the other was for a group of finance ministers from different countries.
Not only did I get to spend 4 days in Antigua, but I also got to speak to one of my most international audiences ever. The participants LOVED it and I get a major kick out of knowing that our ideas have now been spread to Mongolia, Sierra Leone, Laos, Uganda, Suriname, Kosovo and many other countries.
And this trip means that I have now spoken in 32 different countries :o)
Last week when I was in London I met Gaye Andrews who is Head of Customer Service, EMEA at PEER 1 Hosting and very much the woman behind creating a great workplace.
She shared a cool policy they have: Any employee who has an idea to make work more fun or the office a little more cool that costs less than £100 can just do it and expense the amount.
As an example, that’s how they got space hoppers.
I think it’s a cool idea, that can remove layers of bureaucracy and get employees involved in making the workplace better and happier.
Helpfulness must be actively nurtured in organizations, however, because it does not arise automatically among colleagues.
From this excellent HBR article on how IDEO promotes a culture of helping.
I just got one of my favorite kinds of emails – from a company who is doing something to create a happier workplace.
Dean Stainton who is the Director of Client Services and People Systems at NRI Distribution in Canada wrote:
I wanted to reach out to you and let you know about a couple of things.
I had the fun of meeting you at the Worldblu Live Conference in Denver and attending your session on workplace happiness. As a result of that experience I decided to try something when I got back to our work environment.
I am very fortunate that I have accountabilities on both the HR and the Client Services side, knowing that getting 12 customer service reps onside with workplace happiness would be far more difficult than 4 HR people I decided to give it a try and tackle Workplace Happiness with the 12.
I bought copies of the book for everyone (Happy Hour is 9 – 5) and everyone took some time to read it on their own. After reading the book we discussed it in our weekly meeting (which has been named Happy Hour!) and each Client Services Rep and myself were left with three questions to answer:
- What can you do to make NRI a happier place to be?
- What can we do as a team to make NRI a happier place to be?
- What is stopping you/us from doing the answers to the above?
Those are some great questions and Dean’s group came up with plenty of ideas and have implemented two already.
One is a Praise Window at Dean’s office (erasable markers are available at the window and coworkers write down good things about each other for everyone to see). Dean writes:
No matter what people have written they are doing it with a smile on their face and typically a little giggle. Everyone who comes by stops to have a read and all either smile or laugh too….it is really contagious (but you already knew that). It has gotten to the point now where people in the warehouse are talking about doing the “praise window”. It has been particularly neat to see this coming from the Client Services side, as people have typically expected things like this from our HR team.
Someone else suggested “sharing the love,” writing:
I know that every now and then I get an email from a client who is super stoked about something. Most of the time I’m just happy that they’re happy and delete the email. Recently I forwarded one of these emails to Ops to SHOW them that the client was happy with the work they had done. This is praise coming directly from the client, and not just boring old me who says “yay! Thanks!” all the time. I think it was awesome for them to see, and made them feel good about their work! I know this isn’t something that happens often, but when it does…..share it!
Dean sums the whole thing up like this:
The ideas and enthusiasm have been amazing and once realizing that they didn’t need anyone’s “permission” to do cool, fun things it has been contagious.
And this is the team doing it, not the Manager asking them to do it!
We are very early in our journey but wanted to let you know the impact that your insight and passion have had on our team. I anticipate that the next time I send you an email it will have expanded past the Client Services Team. Thanks Alex!
What I really like about this is two things:
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: Happiness at work is something we do.
I suggest you find a way to ask some of the same questions in your workplace and if you come up with something cool, please tell me about it :o)
This awesome UFO is parked in the courtyard of the Zappos.com HQ in Las Vegas and can be used for meetings. I love that kind of thing.
“Study finds that basically every single person hates performance reviews.”
That’s the headline for this new Washington Post article and I couldn’t agree more.
In fact, I’ve written about this previously. Here are the Top 10 Reasons Why Performance Reviews Don’t Work.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
– Soren Kierkegaard
I gave a speech at Boston University and during the Q&A someone mentioned the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard and called him Denmark’s Chief Unhappiness Officer. I loved that :o)
The quote above is probably his most famous and offers a real insight: It’s important to reflect on your past but you can’t live looking backwards.
This week’s tip for more happiness is to simply take a moment to reflect on the things you have done recently to create some happiness at work for yourself or others and to look forward as well
If you’re reading this, I can only assume that you agree with me that being happy at work is a worthwhile goal and something we should all focus on.
There are two steps to this. Take a few quiet minutes to yourself today, where you can reflect on these questions. Write your answers down, that makes it stick more.
1: Think back
So what have you done to promote happiness in your workplace? What worked and why did it work? What didn’t work and what could you have done instead?
And if you haven’t really done anything specific at work to create some happiness, ask yourself why not? What’s holding you back? If you continue to do nothing, what will that lead to?
2: Look forward
What can you do from now on? What have you learned works? What have you learned doesn’t work that you should stay away from?
What can you gain from creating more happiness at work for yourself and others? What can you lose if you don’t?
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