The attitude employees have towards the company is incredibly important.
In this video I talk about why it matters and how to improve employees’ attitudes towards the organization and the huge role the CEO and upper management plays in this.
Tag Archives: featured
Awesome new podcast: Electric Enthusiasm
MY NEW PODCAST IS OUT!!! In it, I and my awesome and highly energetic co-host Katie Cobalt celebrate unironic enthusiasm by getting excited about a wide variety of topics.
The first episode is about The Happiest Man in Hollywood – Harpo Marx of the Marx Brothers. Hear amazing stories about Harpo’s epic life, his best pranks and about his occasional nudism. He could (and would) turn any boring situation – like a game of golf – interesting by taking off his clothes.
In each episode we also have a Moment of Meta where we give tips for living a more enthusiastic life.
You can hear it on Spotify, Apple, Google and all the other podcast platforms or right here:
If you like the episode and also believe the world needs more enthusiastic people, please share the podcast with others. That would makes us really happy!
Quit for the climate
Global warming is an existential threat to all humanity and corporations emit the vast majority of manmade greenhouse gases.
If you currently work for a company that does not urgently strive to become carbon neutral in a very short time frame, you have two choices:
- Do everything you can to make that organization carbon neutral
- If they won’t, quit and go work for a company that will
It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO or the receptionist, you have an ethical responsibility to not use your time and talents in the service of a workplace that is wrecking the planet.
If enough of us act on this, we can force more corporations to take the climate seriously, either by changing their behavior from the inside or by sapping them of critical employee talent.
You can change things – and at the very least you can make sure that your work days aren’t spent hurting our children’s futures.
I QUIT! How you get out of a bad job before it’s too late.
Some people want you to believe that quitting is weak and for losers. They’re lying and we need to normalize leaving jobs that are not good for us.
In this video we take a deep look at what happens when you’re unhappy at work, how you can know it’s time to quit and how you can support others who need to get away from a bad job.
Content:
(00:00) 1: Frogs aren’t idiots
(01:01) 2: Introduction to quitting
(03:45) 3: How hating your job hurts you
(06:56) 4: Exposing the anti-quitting propaganda
(18:05) 5: The excuses people make for not quitting
(27:23) 6: Should you quit?
(32:47) 7: 21 perfectly valid reasons for quitting
(40:21) 8: What if you can’t quit
(46:24) 9: How to quit
(47:39) 10: Should you always find a new job first before you quit?
(49:42) 11: We should celebrate quitters
(59:22) 12: I quit!
References, articles and books from the video
Relationship between a bad job and poor health
A bad job makes you gain weight
Unhappy workers are less productive
Effective propaganda exploits existing biases
How Herbalife and other MLMs scam people
The No Asshole Rule – excellent book by Bob Sutton
Turing pharmaceuticals raised prices
Stories from people who quit without first finding a new jobs
Apprentice car mechanic commits suicide after being bullied
The most basic freedom is the freedom to quit
The true cost of employee turnover
Bosses try to predict who will quit
Related posts
The Cult Of Overwork
60-hour workweeks (or more!) kill people. That seems bad and we should probably stop it. In this video I explain how we get back to or even below 40 hours of work a week.
References from the videos
CNN’s article on “The Secrets Of Greatness.
Working hours in different countries.
The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor.
The Industrial Revolution In Manchester.
Rutger Bregmann: Utopia For Realists.
Tom Markert: You Can’t Win A Fight With Your Boss.
HBR: Long Hours Backfire For People And For Companies.
Long working hours hurt cognitive performance.
John Pencavel: Productivity for WW1 Munitions Workers.
Overtime in game developers doesn’t work.
Negative Health Effects Of Overwork.
Very few people can get by on less than 7 hours of sleep.
Gender bias in overwork cultures.
Men pretend to work 80-hours weeks.
What’s really holding women Back.
People overestimate their working hours.
People underestimate health risks of overwork.
Fred Gratzon: The Lazy Way To Success.
There are some career benefits to overwork.
Interview with Rich Sheridan at Menlo.
Knowledge Workers Are More Productive From Home.
Longer school days do not lead to better academic outcomes.
Homework does not help students.
Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule debunked again.
Hazing reinforces hierarchy, conformity and discipline.
Benjamin Hunnicutt: Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day.
European Union – right to disconnect law.
Universal Basic Income Explained.
US workers don’t take all their vacation days.
30-hour work week at Toyota Center Gothenburg.
Trump or Biden – who’s the better boss?
We all know how their policies differ, but how are Trump and Biden different as bosses? And who would you rather work for?
References from the video:
Alfie Kohn – “No Contest : The Case Against Competition”
Philip Rucker and Carol Loennig – “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America”
Npr interview with Philip Rucker and Carol Loennig
Get my books (Happy Hour is 9 To 5 and Leading With Happiness) free of charge
Times are tough for for workplaces all over the world right now. I would like to share some of my tools in the hope that maybe it can help a little.
So I’m making my two main books available as pdf downloads free of charge for anyone who wants them. There’s also no annoying email signup required or anything – just click below to download either book.
Happy Hour is 9 To 5
“It’s very, very good. It’s incredibly well written, full of insights, and there are exercises to improve your own happiness at work. You can’t ask for more than that!”
– David Maister, author of Practice What You Preach
“I have read well over 100 articles/books on topics covering happiness in the workplace and your book was by far one of the best. In fact, it was so informative that I went on and sent the link to your book to my entire professional network.”
– Chris Hollins, President, talentgrade.com
This book clearly explains what happiness at work is (and isn’t) and what each of us can do to have work we love.
Click here to download Happy Hour Is 9 To 5.
Leading With Happiness
“What an inspiring book. Every leader should read it and learn how to promote happiness for employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and even the leader him- or herself. That type of leadership has been integral to our success and I know it will boost your results too.”
– Garry Ridge, CEO WD-40 Company
This book presents a simple but radical idea: The fundamental goal of any leader should be to increase happiness in the world. Leaders who don’t do that are doing it wrong.
Drawing on fascinating lessons from psychology, neurobiology and philosophy, the book demonstrates why leaders should put happiness first – for themselves, their employees, their customers, and the wider world – and why happy leaders are more successful.
Click here to download Leading With Happiness.
If you’d prefer to have either book as a kindle ebook or on paper (how old-school) they are available here and here.
Meet the newest certified Chief Happiness Officers
Our latest Chief Happiness Officer Academy was a huge hit with 18 engaged participants from 12 countries who are now ready to go out and make workplaces awesome.
The only thing that wasn’t great about the Academy was the Copenhagen winter weather, but that might be a good thing. One participant wrote this in LinkedIn afterwards:
“It’s been raining most of the last four days here in Copenhagen, which has probably been a blessing, because otherwise I might spontaneously combust from all the incredible energy that’s been generated at the Chief Happiness Officer Academy.”
We had a great time going through the latest research and best practices on happiness at work. We also had a fantastic visit to DHL Express Denmark, where their HR Manager Sarah Olsen gave a passionate tour and talk about their happy culture.
Here are some of my favorite pics from this Academy:
The BEST way to measure employee happiness
Measuring happiness at work is a great idea and every workplace should do it because:
- It shows employees you care about them
- It identifies problem areas and strong points in your culture
- It shows you what exactly to do to make employees happier and more productive
In short, if you’re not effectively and reliably measuring happiness at work, you’re missing out on one of the most effective tools to create a happier culture.
Sadly, the way most organizations do it just doesn’t work, because they measure too rarely (typically once a year) with too many questions and fail to follow up on results quickly.
We desperately wanted to fix that, so we created HeartCount – a tool that measures employee happiness weekly with very few but very relevant questions so that the organization can follow up immediately on any issues.
It’s incredibly simple:
- Every Friday all employees get an email with 3 questions about their week.
- They reply to those questions directly in the email. No login, no apps, no additional hassles.
- Employees see immediate results of their input and management/HR can immediately access the data and act on any problems or wins right away.
Learn all about HeartCount and sign up for a demo here.
Disclaimer: I am a cofounder/co-owner of HeartCount and the one who came up with the idea for it, based on all the frustrations I noticed with the “regular” way of measuring satisfaction.
Related posts
- 10 reasons why job satisfaction surveys are a waste of time
- How to measure happiness at work – and how not to
- 20 ways to measure happiness at work that are better than “satisfaction” surveys
We’re taking a long break
I started Woohoo Inc back in 2003 so we have been spreading happiness at work for over 16 years. Our keynotes, workshops, articles, conferences, videos and books have reached millions of people all over the world.
But something is wrong. For the last couple of years I have been unhappy at work and that won’t really do for someone in my business :)
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why work stopped being fun for me, but here are three reasons that have played a role:
- For a long time we’ve been working on the same level, i.e. the same number of clients, the same number of readers on our articles and books, the same number of views on our videos, the same number of participants at our events, etc. I’ve tried many things to develop the business to reach more people but little of it has worked and when things stand still, I get bored.
- There are too many people in this field who attract attention by saying either platitudes or unverifiable nonsense. For instance, some recent bestselling books have claimed that positive feedback is bad for you, that we should resist growth and development, that we should ignore emotions at work or that work should be duty – not passion. It’s frustrating to have to refute dumb claims like this over and over again.
- My previous longest stint in the same job was 5 years, so this has been 3 times as long. Maybe 16 years doing the same thing is simply enough for me.
Simply put, it’s time for me to take my own medicine and do something to become happy at work again so from January 1st I’m shutting the company down for 6 months to go traveling. What will happen after that? I have no idea :)
Fortunately we have built a fantastic international partner network over the last 3 years who have all been trained in our methods and who are doing amazing work around the world. They are ready to step in while we’re gone.
So if you’re looking for a speaker or consultant to come in and make your organization happier and more profitable, don’t hesitate for a second to book any of them.