Happy Hour is 9 to 5 (9 page)

Most companies tend more towards secrecy, which is a mistake as far as happiness at work is concerned. Sharing important information with people makes them feel trusted and valued. If employees really know what’s going on, it makes them more efficient and better able to make good decisions.

Openness also entails honesty and fairness. If a company is dishonest and unfair it’s not open, and if your job doesn’t allow you to be open, honest and fair, it’s sure to make you unhappy.

Show what you feel

The IT support department at the medical company Leo Pharma, outside Copenhagen, Denmark, is a critical part of the organisation. If IT aren’t picking up their phones, Leo’s 4,000 employees have nowhere to go with their IT-related questions and problems. To ensure that the phones are always manned, a huge whiteboard with a space for each support worker shows who’s at work and manning the phones at any given time.

The IT department knows that people have good days and bad days, and they’re fine with that. They have a simple policy: when employees arrive in the morning, they can place a green or a red magnetic tag next to their name. Green means, “I’m having a good day,” and red means, “I’m having a bad day.”

When a co-worker storms in the door without saying good morning, places a red marker next to his name, and sits at his desk scowling, you don’t have to wonder, “Was it something I said?”

This is a great policy that does two things:

1. It makes it visible who is having a good or a bad day, and people with red markers are given a little space and leeway. If somebody puts up a red marker every day for a week then it is clear that steps need to be taken to help that person.
   
2. It makes it permissible to have a bad day. We all have bad days, but if you have to hide it and pretend to be chipper, it takes longer to get out of the bad mood.
   

What often happens at Leo is that an employee will place a red marker in the morning, and then change it to a green one later that morning. When people are given permission to have a bad day, they recover faster and there’s less chance that they will spread their bad mood to their co-workers.

It’s interesting to notice the degree to which the full range of natural human emotions are not welcome in the workplace. There seems to be a widely-held belief that we’re professionals at work, and professionals approach their work rationally and without emotion. Businesses would prefer us to act more like Spock, the Vulcan science officer on Star Trek, who famously said, “Emotions are alien to me. I’m a scientist.”

Professor Teresa M. Amibile has been researching how working environment influences the motivation, creativity, and performance of individuals and teams. In an interview on the Harvard Business School website, she identified three main points:

1. People have incredibly rich, intense, daily inner work lives; emotions, motivations, and perceptions about their work environment permeate their daily experience at work.
   
2. These feelings powerfully affect people’s day-to-day performance.
   
3. These feelings, which are so important for performance, are powerfully influenced by particular daily events
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So, we have strong emotions at work, they are affected by what goes on in the workplace, and they have a powerful impact upon our performance. Of course we do — we’re human beings whether we’re at work or not, and human beings have emotions.

“Emotions are alien to me. I’m an employee of Acme Inc.” That is not how we work.

It’s important that we show our positive emotions because that is one of the best ways to spread happiness to others, as we saw in Chapter 2.  If you’re really happy and don’t show it, the feeling will quickly die away in you and in others.

It’s also important to deal constructively with negative emotions. If something at work makes us angry, disappointed or sad and we don’t act on it, three things could happen:

1. The emotion becomes stronger — Because the situation doesn’t get resolved the feeling is likely to become more intense.
   
2. Saving it for later — Instead of dealing with your anger at the meeting that sparked it, you lash out at a co-worker later, at the server at Starbucks who forgets to put soy milk in your latte, or even at your family.
   
3. The ketchup effect — Feelings bottled up over a long time suddenly get released all at once and you blow up over some small matter.
   

All in all, it’s healthier to recognise negative emotions as a sign that something is wrong and then to do something about it. I’m not saying that we should all be hyper-emotional — there are constructive ways to deal with negative emotions at work. If you’re dissatisfied with something, complain constructively.

Love

Thyra Frank was head of a nursing home in Copenhagen for almost 25 years. She is now in her mid-fifties, outspoken, constantly cracks jokes, and has a loud, infectious laugh. Working in the public sector means facing a certain set of constraints: not much money, a lot of red tape, and very little leeway. In the face of this, she created what may be the best functioning nursing home in Denmark.

The employees love working there, and the clients (the elderly) love living there, because of the positive mood and the happy employees, but also because of the weekly gala dinners with great food, wine, live piano music, and after-dinner brandy. The residents also live on average twice as long as in other nursing homes. The only people who aren’t crazy about her work are the authorities, because she continues to flout the rules and do things her own way.

During her first Christmas as head, her husband persuaded her to give the employees Christmas presents. This is not normally done in the public sector, and the home had no budget for it. Undaunted, Thyra went to a local supermarket and bought a cheap bottle of red wine for each of her employees at her own expense. She also wrote a note to each of her employees, explaining what she enjoyed about working with that person.

It may have been a small gesture, but several of her employees ended up crying with joy. Not so much at the cheap bottle of wine, but at the personal, hand-written letter.

One company that understands the importance of love is Southwest Airlines, and they even call themselves The Love Airline. Southwest Airlines hire people first for their personality, and secondly for their skills: “Hire for attitude, train for skill.” To Southwest, a nice, sunny, outgoing disposition matters more than degrees or experience. As a result, Southwest is not only a happy place to work — it’s also an efficient and profitable company.

Get to know the people around you at work. You don’t need to make friends with everybody, but having positive relationships at work is one of the most important factors that ensure happiness at work. Positive relationships can be fostered with co-workers, employees, customers, suppliers, or even competitors.

Random acts of workplace kindness

Patricia was leaving work after a long day. She was almost the last to leave, and had to admit that she hadn’t enjoyed her day much. People seemed so intent on their jobs and nobody seemed to care about the people around them.

When Patricia went into the break room to wash her coffee mug, she spotted her co-worker Lisa’s unwashed mug by the sink. She quickly washed both mugs, and then, on a whim, wrote a post-it note saying, “Have a great day,” drew a smiley on it and stuck it on Lisa’s mug. Then she went home.

The next morning Lisa walked through the entire department with her mug in her hands and a huge smile on her face, saying “Who did this? What a great thing to do! Who was it? This totally made my morning!” Once Patricia admitted it was her, Lisa thanked her profusely. She could be found smiling broadly for a long time after. Patricia’s one-minute gesture made a colleague happy at work, not just that morning but for the entire day.

It’s not like there’s only so much happiness at work to go around, and if others have too much, there won’t be enough for you. No, the very best way to make yourself happy at work is to make others happy because:

1. Making others happy at work is a pleasure in itself.
   
2. Happiness is contagious, so more happy people around you means more happiness for you.
   
3. If you make others happy at work, there’s a good chance they’ll want to make you happy in return.
   

It’s easy too:

• Bring someone a cup of coffee without them asking.
  
• Write a nice message on a post-it and stick it on their desk or computer.
  
• Offer to help with their work.
  
• Pass out candy.
  
• Leave a flower on someone’s desk.
  
• Write someone a card.
  
• Take time to chat.
  
• Ask someone about their weekend.
  

There are many random acts of workplace kindness to try — and they work wonders!

Say good morning and goodbye

David Valls Coma of Albertis Telecom in Barcelona told me this story:

“My company moved a couple of years ago. When I first arrived in the new building I met a serious security guard that looked at me like he was gruffly asking: “Who are you and where are you going?” I said good morning and entered the elevator. Next day I planned an experiment to see how a smile would change his reaction.

When I entered the building I looked at the man and wished him a good morning with a big, sincere smile on my face. I meant it, and that made him change his serious face to a grin. He wished me a good morning too.

I have been doing “the big smile experiment” ever since and it has become an anchor. Every time in, I enter the building saying “Good Morning!” with a smile, and that makes me start the day with smile in my face and in my heart.

And my relationship with the security guard is great. We chat for a moment when we run into each other, making my day, and I hope his, more enjoyable.

As the result was so good I have added this practice to my everyday life and try to give away sincere smiles to whoever I meet.

It’s an unpleasant experience to come into the office happy, call out a cheerful “Good morning!” and then get nothing but reluctant, unintelligible grumblings in response.

When you arrive in the morning, make a round of your department and greet everyone there. The keys to a good greeting are to:

• Make eye contact.
  
• Give the person your full attention.
  
• Be cheerful.
  

When other people arrive after you, take a moment to greet them. Repeat this at the end of the day with cheerful goodbyes when you leave to go home.

It’s such a simple and banal thing to do, but it makes a huge difference to relationships at the office, makes people feel more connected to each other, and establishes better communications throughout the day.

Take an interest in other people — as people

“The best boss I ever had was a woman called Linda,” explains Mary, a secretary for a big Scandinavian telecommunications company. “Not only was our department consistently efficient and fun to work in, but she was rated the best manager to work for in the company year after year.

“How did she do it? Easy — she took an interest in us. She knew each of us, not only as employees but also as human beings. She not only knew about our hobbies, families, children, and lives in general — she sincerely cared about us and always had time to chat.”

If all your conversations with co-workers are about goals, deadlines and tasks, it’s nearly impossible to create good workplace relations. In the happiest workplaces, people care about each other not just as workers but as human beings.