Or not, as the case may be. Some of the stuff these companies do to enforce happiness is unbelievable. I had a taste of is some years back when working at Sainsbury’s. It was universally ignored as everyone there knew that they were there because they needed the work, not because they wanted to be happy. The idea died a stillbirth. Although, I suspect that there will have been other attempts since I left – now that made me happy….
Firms such as Zappos have started to employ chief happiness officers. There is also a booming field of management research on positivity at work.
Reggie Perrin was supposed to be a comedy show, not an instruction manual.
But despite all this effort, work still sucks. According to a recent study by the London School of Economics, the place where we feel most miserable is work. There is only one place and circumstance that makes us feel worse – being sick in bed.
Well, yes, I could have told you that. The only way to overcome this is to do something you enjoy and make money from that. I am fortunate in that I love training, so, actually, I love my work. The travelling gets me down, but the work is fine. The motorcycle training doesn’t pay well, but being out on the bike and getting paid for is its own reward. I don’t need a “funsultant”.
However, the Finnish company had invested heavily in a smartphone operating system called Symbian, which wasn’t working well. Middle managers in the company knew it, but they feared communicating the bad news up the hierarchy because they didn’t want to appear to be negative. They had got the message: if you wanted to keep your division open, it was imperative to be only upbeat and pass on positive news. Because senior managers only got positive news, it took them too long to ditch Symbian, switch operating systems and launch a decent smartphone. By that point, Apple and Samsung had overtaken Nokia. Now Nokia no longer makes mobile phones.
Mmm, that reminds me of my time at Network Rail HQ – anyone who said “no” was deemed to be negative and Iain Coucher surrounded himself with “yes” men. Those who dared to say “no” were the ones who went in his great round of redundancies that year. Nothing changes, eh?
“Reggie Perrin was supposed to be a comedy show, not an instruction manual.”
Reggie Perrin? You should be so lucky. This is pure David Brent!
Well, yes… I was thinking of the wellness person in the new series they did. But, yeah, David Brent is probably more accurate.
Years ago my workplace used to have a social club that was quite effective. They used to do various events and there wasn’t any pressure to take part. The ones that were a hit would be done again the next year, anything that was a bit of a flop would be quietly dropped. We did the Lyke Wake Walk, treasure hunts, and the garden parties were great fun. The thing about all this was that it was sort of organic, there wasn’t anything forced about it. Once you make having fun compulsory it stops being fun, you would think that this would be obvious to anybody.
Visible enjoyment or fun is diagnostic of enthusiasm. So laugh at the boss jokes or else.QED
Wasn’t there a company some while ago (one of the big IT companies, I think) who spent FORTUNES on an adult “playground” complete with slides and see-saws and swings because they believed that when people were “relaxed and enjoying themselves” they came up with better creative ideas, and they felt that their creativity had stalled in recent years. How silly. They could have saved themselves a fortune just by installing some good heaters and decent seats in the smoking area out the back and stopped finger-wagging at their smoking staff and the creativity would have started flowing again. Let adults relax and enjoy themselves like adults (rather than getting them to pretend to be daft kids) and the creativity naturally follows.
Happiness Officers have to be a mark of desperation by the companies concerned. It’s a bad idea from the back catalogue of bad ideas that assumes everyone is the same. Personally I’d rather be fired than work for a company like that.