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 (download them for free) 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:
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.
For a long time business has been steady and we’ve been doing the same kind of work. I usually have more fun developing new projects rather than managing existing ones. This just doesn’t tickle my entrepreneurial funny bone.
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. I took 6 months off (starting January 1st) to get some distance and think about my future and that helped me come to a decision: I am leaving the field and will no longer do speeches or workshops about happiness at work.
I still believe that this field is incredibly important. Workplaces and employees face huge problems, not the least of which is COVID-19, and still need inspiration and tools to create and maintain happiness at work.
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.
Apart from that, I have no idea what’s next for me. I’m waiting for inspiration to strike me. If you have any ideas or suggestion for what I would be awesome at, let me know :)
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.
“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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
I think that’s complete nonsense! I know – what a shocker :) But worst of all it’s poorly reasoned nonsense that relies on a string of terrible arguments and deliberate ignorance of the research in the field.
Here are the top 5 fails from DeBrarander’s article and why you should most definitely seek work you’re passionate about.
1: He blames the long US working hours on people’s passion for their jobs
The United States offers a curious paradox: Though the standard of living has risen, and creature comforts are more readily and easily available — and though technological innovations have made it easier to work efficiently — people work more, not less.
Why is this?
One theory is that Americans have come to expect work to be a source of meaning in their lives.
There are no studies showing that people who find work meaningful work more hours than those who don’t.
If you want to actually know why working hours are still on the rise in the US, I think it makes much more sense to look at some of these factors:
Bad management practices
Workplace cultural norms
Economic insecurity caused by a hugely challenged middle class that are one pay check away from financial disaster.
The high cost of college educations and the huge amount of debt that many young people graduate with – meaning that they absolutely must work or face personal bankruptcy.
Put people with huge financial insecurity in a workplace that expects and demands 60, 70 or 80-hour work weeks, and they most often have no option but to go along and work themselves to death.
2: Being passionate about your work means that you experience constant bliss
Most people are certainly guaranteed to fail in this pursuit [of passion at work]. Even people who love their jobs will report they must do thankless tasks from time to time. Few, if any, experience nonstop bliss, where sheer passion sustains them through long hours on the job.
Notice what DeBrabrander did there? He just redefined being passionate about your work to mean that you experience nonstop bliss and sheer sustained passion.
This is what’s known as a strawman argument, where you exaggerate, misrepresent, or just completely fabricate someone’s position, to make it easier to attack.
Just to be clear: Being passionate about your job does not mean that you experience nonstop bliss. Everyone has bad days at work – and that’s perfectly OK. And of course every job contains a mix of tasks that you enjoy and tasks that suck – and that’s OK too.
3: Young people burn out because they seek passion at work
There is plenty of evidence that our high-octane work culture has serious consequences. It is at least partly responsible for high levels of burnout among millennials.
And while there definitely is an increase of stress, burnout, depression and mental problems among young people, it’s intellectually lazy to just conclude that it’s caused mainly – or even partly – by their search for passion and meaning at work.
Young people are also facing many other pressures, including a global climate disaster that no one is doing much about, while they are of course the ones who will have to live with the consequences of that inaction. Might that be a source of stress for them? No, says DeBrabrande – their real problem is that they expect their jobs to be meaningful.
4: If you seek passion in your work, you will fail
A recent study of priorities among young people found that achieving one’s career passion ranks highest of all… Finding a fulfilling job is almost three times more important than having a family, teenagers in the study reported.
It is daunting to contemplate. Most people are certainly guaranteed to fail in this pursuit.
Got that? If you seek passion at work, you are almost guaranteed to fail. Really? How would he know? Of course, he’s previously redefined passion at work to mean constant bliss and if that’s your goal, of course you will fail.
And just to make it worse, the study he links to in support of his claim is not even about passion at work. The actual finding is that 95% of US teenagers surveyed say that “having a job or career they enjoy” is important to them.
5: Passion means that work is the ONLY source of meaning in your life
We might begin by rejecting the notion that work should consume our lives, define and give meaning to them…
Again, the article dishonestly redefines passion to mean that work consumes your life and gives meaning to it.
In reality, passion for your job simply means that you are passionate about the work you do – not that it’s the only thing are passionate about.
Why you absolutely should seek work you’re passionate about
This kind of attack on happiness at work is nothing new. Many serious people are coming out of the woodwork to declare that happiness at work is stupid, impossible, naïve, silly, manipulative and/or bad for you. In the video above we cover their 20 most used objections to workplace happiness and why they’re wrong.
DeBrabrander’s analysis is poorly argued and of course also wrong. Everyone should absolutely seek work they’re passionate about. There are many reasons why, but the most important are these:
It will make you happier at work
It will make you happier in life
It will make you more successful at work
It will protect you from doing harmful work – whereas not trying to find meaning at work makes it more likely that you will end up doing work that exploits or harms others
Work is where you will spend many of your waking hours – of course you should spend that time doing something you care about
Work is where you will invest most of your energy, skills and competencies – all of that effort should be invested in the service of a cause you care about
Paradoxically, I actually think DeBrabrander agrees! When he talks about approaching work as duty rather than passion, he bases this on an understanding of duty that comes from stoic philosophy. I have many, many issues with stoic philosophy – not least that it is based on the idea that we are all subjects to a predetermined fate – but it has recently become very fashionable, especially among silicon valley tech bros.
In the NYTimes pice, DrBrabrander recounts The advice of Seneca, one of the most prominent stoics to define duty like this:
Seneca’s advice to Serenus is to focus on doing his duty. He must perform the job he is best disposed and able to perform, as determined by his nature, and the needs of those around him. And he must forget about glory or thrill or personal fulfillment — at least in the near term. If he performs his duty, Seneca explains, fulfillment will come as a matter of course.
Duty, in this definition, is not just about having a “Shut up and do your job” approach. It’s about doing work that you’re good at and which meets the needs of those around you.
In the “calling” orientation, people are working not for career advancement or for financial gain, but instead for the fulfilment or the meaning that the work itself brings to the individual. People who see their work more as a calling see the work as an end in itself that is deeply fulfilling and regardless of the kind of work they’re doing, they tend to see the work as having a societal benefit.
It’s ultimately about working for something bigger than yourself.
The upshot
This opinion piece is poorly researched and dishonest – so of course the advice it gives is bad.
Seeking passion and meaning at work is the path to more career happiness and success and less stress and burnout. It’s also one way you can help create a better world, by making sure that all of your professional skill and energy is spent in the service of something that you can clearly see is making the world a better place, rather than in just obtaining a pay check or career advancement.
I have to say, if you make your career choices with no consideration for where your passions lie, I honestly pity you.
The Summer holidays are right around the corner here in the northern hemisphere and I am really excited for it. No matter how much you love your job, you should still look forward to some time off, where you can do something completely different.
But it’s important to do your vacation right. If not, you risk ruining the whole thing by doing emails at the pool or by feeling bad about the work you didn’t do before going on vacation. That’s not doing anyone any favors – not even the workplace – because time off from work is a prerequisite for happiness and productivity.
So here are our 4 best tips for having a happy vacation.
1: Actually take a vacation
I can’t believe I even have to say this, but in many countries people don’t take the vacation time they’re entitled to. One person wrote this comment on my blog:
I’m 34 and haven’t had a real vacation since my childhood vacations with my parents. The only way I manage to take an entire week off at a time (I work in IT) is when I’m able to schedule a week or two of “unemployment” between jobs, and in those periods, spending money on a trip is not wise.
I’m tied to my email/pager even on weekends and holidays and on the scattered “vacation” days I can take. Most Americans only get 2-3 weeks of combined sick and vacation time in any case, and professionals are expected to read email and be available, even on their days “off”.
I wonder how many people are able to have a real vacation these days!
Take your vacations. And if you work for a company that refuses to understand that human beings need time off from work, quit and go work for a company that actually cares about its people.
2: Get organized before you go
Clear out any outstanding work and your email inbox. This will give you clarity and control of any tasks. This sounds boring but it’s quite satisfying to get your work organized and go on vacation with an empty inbox.
And if you know there are important tasks that you can’t get done before you leave, hand them over to a coworker in plenty of time. Make sure to hand over the task with all necessary information so it’s easy for your coworkers to take over. That also keeps them from having to disturb you on your vacation, so you’re helping both them and yourself.
3: Don’t work on your vacation
Don’t bring the company mobile and don’t read work-related emails. Take a real vacation and let your brain do something completely different.
Instead, spend some time doing new things you’ve wanted to try for a long time but haven’t had time for. Go rollerskating, windsurfing, fishing or whatever strikes your fancy. Can I suggest swing dancing? It’s amazing!
Or maybe just kick off your shoes and go lie in a hammock. Stare out at the water. Have days with no plans and time for reflection.
4: Close your email inbox completely
If you have some vacation time coming up, and if you’re like most people, you will put up an autoreply email just before you leave, saying that you’re gone, when you’ll be back and who to contact if it’s urgent.
I have talked to many people who mention both of these as a source of stress and I’ve just seen too many parents on family vacations handling work emails on their phone/laptop by the pool, when they should’ve been playing with their kids.
Fortunately, there’s an alternative: Close your inbox while you’re away. This may seem like a weird idea but some workplaces are already doing it. Here’s how you can close your inbox completely on your vacation.
I’m taking all of July off and I will be doing exactly that.
The upshot
For crying out loud: Take your vacation time and make it a good one.
Most companies conduct regular job satisfaction surveys, but they often don’t work very well and fail to deliver tangible improvements to employees’ perception of their workplace. This leads to increased unhappiness among employees and from there to lower productivity and higher employee turnover.
In this video we cover:
Why you absolutely should measure happiness at work
Why traditional job satisfaction surveys often fail
Better ways to measure happiness at work – ie. more often, more relevant and more valuable
Share specific experiences from a company that tried it
A very brief introduction to Heartcount – a unique new tool for measuring happiness at work
In dancing – just as in business – there are leaders and followers. But if you think this means that “The leader always leads and the follower does what they’re told” then you’re very wrong.
Miranda van Wonterghem is an international swing dance teacher and in this amazing talk from our International Conference On Happiness at Work, she revealed the three main things business leaders should learn from dancers to create happier and more effective leadership – AND demonstrated it with dancing.
Sure, it has its problems. Any time you measure anything, you run the risk of getting bad data, the wrong data or making bad decisions based on the data.
But it still makes sense for two main reasons.
First and most obviously, if you measure employee happiness right, it can actually guide efforts to improve the workplace by identifying organizational problems and strengths.
Also, most business leaders are highly results oriented and data driven and find it hard to value things they can’t put a number on. Tracking employee happiness with hard numbers in some way can bolster organizational commitment to happiness initiatives.
So what can you measure? This can go way beyond just an annual job satisfaction survey. It’s essential to find the metrics that are relevant to your employees, your customers and your organization.
Here are all the potential ways we’ve come up with to measure employee happiness. Did we forget any? Write a comment if you have one we didn’t include.
Measure employee mood
If you want to know how happy your employees are, you can quite simply ask them. The traditional way is of course to run annual satisfaction surveys but I’m very skeptical about that approach.
You can measure things like:
Happiness
Satisfaction
Engagement
Well-being
Psychological capital
You can conduct the measurement using surveys, apps, mood boards or even just tennis balls.
Other employee metrics
Two other obvious employee-related metrics are:
Absenteeism
Employee turnover
Each of these have a direct bottom line impact and are directly correlated with employee happiness.
Hiring
Happy organizations also attract more and better new hires. That means that you could also measure on metrics like:
Applications received per opening posted
Time to fill positions
Rate of acceptance of job offers
Rate of successful hires (how many new employees stay at least x months)
This will be especially relevant in fast-growing workplaces or in industries where there is strong competition for the best talent.
Customer metrics
We know that happy employees make the customers happy. Some potential metrics are:
Customer happiness / satisfaction
Customer loyalty / repeat business
Brand perception
Employee performance
We also know that happy employees do a better job, so measuring happiness could also mean tracking metrics like:
Productivity
Quality / errors
Workplace safety / accidents
Success rate of innovation / change projects
Negative behavior
Given that happy employees are less likely to engage in bad behavior at work, we could also track metrics like:
HR complaints
Fraud / stealing
Physiological measures
This area is a little more speculative but some people have suggested measuring things like:
Cortisol in saliva samples
Blood pressure
Sleep time and quality
These do raise some ethical issues around privacy and bodily autonomy.
The upshot
Measuring employee happiness can help efforts to improve a workplace and strengthen leadership’s focus and commitment to these efforts.
While traditional satisfaction surveys have a long list of problems, there are many other metrics you can look at.
No workplace should measure all of these metrics. Depending on the industry, situation and type of employees only a small subset of these will be relevant. It’s up to each workplace to define which are the most relevant and to find a good way to track and act on these metrics.
