Who is responsible for happiness at work - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Who is responsible for happiness at work - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog The Order of the Elephant. This little guy helped turn around a childrens hospital ward from an unhappy workplace to a very happy one. Helle Schier, a soft-spoken, engaging woman in her mid-twenties was excited. Shed just graduated from nursing school, and had already gotten her first job as a nurse at Odense University Hospital. But when she told a friend that she was going to work at H4, a childrens ward, her friends reaction was Well, Im not sure if I should congratulate you. It turned out that H4 had quite a reputation. The nurses rarely helped each other out. The doctors disliked the nurses and that was very much mutual. The nurses disliked the administrative staff who in turn didnt feel their work was being appreciated. It was not a happy place to work. Helle still started working there with a positive attitude, but was soon forced to agree: It was a horrible place, and working there was getting her down. She didnt like her job at all, didnt feel productive and started to question whether being a nurse was right for her at all. But Helle wouldnt put up with it and she wouldnt quit. She decided she would do something about it. Whose responsibility? Whose job is it to make you happy at work? Your managers? Your co-workers? The companys? Yours? I hate to say it, but the ultimate responsibility for your happiness at work, can only lie with you. You are responsible for your own happiness at work for three reasons: Happiness at work is a feeling, an emotion. Its something totally inside of you. Only you can truly know whether youre happy at work or how happy. Only you know if things are fine, or if something needs to change. Happiness at work is individual. Only you know that it takes to to make you happy at work. Therefore you are responsible for making sure you have what you need to be happy. Making yourself happy at work can entail some tough choices. It may mean quitting and finding a new job. It may mean taking on an unpleasant conflict, because not taking that conflict would be even worse. It may mean battling existing corporate culture and values. No one but you can make the decision whether or not to do these things. The choice is your, the responsibility is yours. For those reasons, the final responsiblity for you happiness at work can only lie with you. The managers responsibility The excellent book Freedom and accountability at work by Peter Koestenbaum and Peter Block looks at existential philosophy, and applies it to the business world. This quote from that book talks about motivation but the exact same point goes for happiness at work: We currently act as if people are not inherently motivated, rather that they go to work each day and wait for someone else to light their fire. This belief is common among managers and employees alike? It is right and human for managers to care about the motivation and morale of their people, it is just that they are not the cause of it. Managers should ask for feedback from employees about how they could improve as managers, but they ask this out of their own interest and desire to learn, not for the sake of the employee. Of course your manager has a huge influence on your happiness at work, but the ultimate responsibility is yours. A managers responsibility is this: To create an environment at work in which its easy to be happy. Whether or not employees take this opportunity is up to them, and you simply cant force people to be happy. Obviously some managers fail completely at this, and instead manage to create atmospheres of mistrust, apathy, desperation and/or cutthroat competition. These managers are failing their responsibility to happiness at work. Other managers create a mood of happiness, positivity, openness and team-work and still find that some employees reamin unhappy. That is not the managers responsibility, and it never could be. The companys responsibility I once talked to a group of employees from Novo, one of Denmarks largest companies, and a very good employer. Theres almost no limit to what they will do for their employees including gyms, good food, training, fresh fruit and much, much more. But this group had a serious beef and were not satisfied. Why, they wanted to know, did the company christmas present to the employees always contain red wine. Some of us prefer white, you know!! Top managements responsibility is to enable managers to create that atmosphere where its easy to be happy at work. But as the above story from Novo shows, no matter how well you do, you cant force people to actually be happy. That is still their own responsibility. Also the company has a responsibility to prioritize, value and reward happiness at work. Its no use for a company to say we want people to be happy at work, and then turn around and reward things like overwork, ruthlessness and a traditional authoritarian management style. A good example to avoid is the following from Tom Markert, the global chief marketing and client service officer at ACNielsen, taken from his book You Cant Win a Fight With Your Boss: You can forget lunch breaks. You cant make money for a company while youre eating lunch . . . if you dont put in the hours, someone just as smart and clever as you will. Fact of life: the strong survive. [If you ignore this] you might just end up as roadkill lying dead by the side of the corporate highway as others drive right past you. I have always made a habit of walking around early and late to personally see whos pumping it out. If they are getting results and working harder than everyone else, I promote them. This kind of approach from top executives means theyve failed their responsibility to happiness at work, and are actively creating an atmosphere of stress, overwork and dog-eat-dog competition. The co-workers responsibility Helle got together with three other nurses from H4, all fresh out of nursing school, and they decided to do something about it and make H4 a happy workplace. They first talked to the head nurse and got her to give them a day off, in which to come up with some ideas. What they came up with was simple. First a summer party for the staff at H4. Nothing fancy, just a garden barbecue and some silly hats. This let people met each other outside of work and established some positive personal relations. Next they focused on praise, and established the order of the elephant. Its a small elephant plush toy that they can pin to their uniforms. It works like this: Whenever they think a co-worker has done something special, they give that person the elephant. They also write in a journal why that person received the elephant. The journal contains entries like these: It makes a great difference whether Vibeke is at work or not. She makes sure everything is tidy in the office, which is a huge help for us nurses. Its difficult to pick one person to give the elephant to, but Im giving it to Nina, because she is always calm, even in stressful situations and because she is so competent. I think everybody at H4 deserves en elephant, but today Im giving it to Joan because shes so great at playing with the children, big and small. This worked especially well, and soon people started noticing a difference at H4. The doctors, the nurses, the head nurse, and perhaps especially the children in the ward and their families. Your co-workers are not responsible for your happiness at work either, and thinking Ill be happy at work as soon as Susan stops talking loudly on the phone, John stops always criticizing people and Martin stops gossiping will get you nowhere. Your co-workers and you have a responsibility to work together to create an atmosphere where its easy to be happy at work. But as before, whether people choose to be happy in that good atmosphere is ultimately their own responsibility. Your responsibility As a result of the simple things helle and her co-workers did, H4 is now a happy place to work, and the four nurses who got the ball rolling are teaching other departments at the hospital how to do the same. Theyre known inside and outside of H4 as the happy girls. The nurses are feeling a difference. The doctors have noticed it. And the children admitted to ward and their parents have noticed a huge difference in the mood and the quality of the care given. In 2005 the happy girls won the Happy at Work Award, an award given to a person or a group who have done something extraordinary to make people happy at work. Youre responsible for your happiness at work. Its that simple. Something will happen when you do something. As long as you sit on your butt waiting for your colleagues, manager and company to make you happy, nothing will happen. And you CAN make a difference. The story from the H4 ward shows that it doesnt take huge resources, management backup, outside consultants or a lot of time. It takes a willingness to take responsibility yourself and do something about it. This doesnt mean that you have to go it alone. Do like Helle did, and get other people excited about happiness at work. This makes it much easier. But dont wait for others to do it for you. As Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead put it: Somebody has to do something, and it?s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us. Thanks for visiting my blog. 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