Happiness at work is a serious topic.

If you attended my speech about happiness at work at Boston University on Wednesday: Thank you! You guys were awesome. I loved the energy and all the great questions and comments in the Q&A session. I would also like to thank the Center for EU Studies for bringing me in to speak and Tim Sullivan for the excellent introduction. It was an absolute pleasure to be back in Boston to speak. Thank you!

If you want more information, you can find my slides and some of our most popular articles and blog posts here.

And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Next week I am giving speeches in New York and Boston that are open to the public. Usually when I speak it’s at a conference or at a company where only conference goers or employees can attend so this is a rare chance. Even better, both events are free :o)

Here are the details.

Monday March 25: NYC
Time: 6 – 8 PM
Location: Aamanns restaurant, 13 Laight Street, New York

Free and open to the public. More information here.

Wednesday March 27: Boston
Time: 6 – 8 PM
Location: Boston University, Trustees Ballroom, 1 Silber Way, 9th floor

Free and open to the public | Reception and book-signing to follow. More information.

Sign up is not required for this event.

See you there.

UPDATE: And if you can’t make it to any of those, I’m also speaking at the amazing WorldBlu LIVE conference in Denver in May. Read all about it and sign up here.

Audience at my speech in Cape Town

I was in South Africa last week to do 6 speeches for ICAS and some of their clients.

They just sent me an email with the participant feedback, and check this out:

Thank you ! Thank you ! Thank you for bringing Alex to SA to come and talk to us. What an inspiration ! I’ve been practicing some of the tips he shared with us and it does make a difference.

Thank you the talk was Great, we really need more of it, and it would be good if the entire company attends.

The talk was awesome and I really took something back to the office with me.

I thoroughly enjoyed the session and would like to encourage my team members.

Thank you to all involved in organizing the talk and especially to Alexander for availing himself and coming to talk to us!!

I really felt inspired and already implemented some of the small changes that can make a huge difference.

I wish my whole department was able to attend, because we could sure use some happiness and enthusiasm in the office!

We should have more of these sessions here at our company. Maybe have one specifically aimed at managers.

I enjoyed it and came back much more in a happy mood.

It is chats like these that gets me going again , back on track & I appreciated the guidance to change my own world with the tips given in the presentation. Thank you for arranging this & I look forward to the next presentation.

I really enjoyed the session and I am tapped into more happiness. Perhaps this would be useful as motivation in one of our newsletters.

I think this should be compulsory rolled out through the whole of our company. That talk was absolutely needed.

It gave me a new outlook towards MY happiness in my workplace. I think Alex is an awesome speaker and does a brilliant job because he is correct in saying happy people produces happier results.
Keep it up guys WOOHOO !!!

Thank you very much for your email. I am so glad that I attended the presentation of Alexander Kjerulf on Thursday. It was excellent.

THANKS ,I have learnt a lot and have change my approach already,my colleuges are in AWE about the New man.

It was really very valuable and enjoyable. The session made me realize that it IS possible to be happy at work.

… I think they liked it :o)

I’m in South Africa this week to do 6 speeches for ICAS and as part of that they set up a twitter tag called #askkjerulf for anyone who wanted to ask me something.

Some questions came in that were really to good to reply to only on twitter, so here goes.

Is happiness in the workplace a product or a process?
This reminds me of the old saying that “There is no way to the Tao, Tao is the way.”

The same thing applies to happiness. You’re never done creating a happy workplace. You can never rest on your laurels. So you can’t look at it as a project with an end goal that, once you achieve it, you can forget about. And that makes it a rather than a product

I highly recommend watching this video from one of our conference, where professor Srikumar Rao talks about “investing in the process, rather than the outcome.”

Some say happiness in the workplace begins at the top, cascades down to the bottom or is it the other way round?
It needs to be both – but that being said, if you want to create a truly happy workplace, you need a leader at the top who is 100% committed to this ideal. Someone like Richard Branson at Virgin, Tony Hsieh at Zappos or Ingvar Kamprad at IKEA.

If such a leader is not present in the organization, you can still create local pockets of happiness in one division or one department, but it will never permeate the entire organization.

Who is responsible for ensuring happiness in the workplace?
That differs. In many companies it’s HR. In many more, no one has that responsibility (and the happiness will suffer as a consequence).

I like the idea of appointing a Chief Happiness Officer in a company – someone who is tasked with promoting the happiness of everyone in the workplace and who is given the necessary resource to do it.

Would you say there is a positive correlation between happiness in the workplace and employee engagement?
There is a massive correlation between happiness and engagement and it’s much easier to be engaged if you’re happy. There’s an interview here, where I talk about this.