Starting tomorrow in your own workplace. Does that sound like a plan? Awesome. So, what makes us happy at work? And I think this is where a lot of companies get it exactly wrong. Because they say, yes, we need more happiness and motivation and engagement. We better look at bonuses. We better look at perks, right? Fresh fruit in the office.
Everybody knows that makes people really happy, right? We better look at you know, titles. Titles, good titles. You know, if you want to make that person happy, make him a senior consultant instead of a junior consultant. And it turns out those things don’t work and we know that from any number of studies that a raise, in fact a raise will make you a little happier for about two weeks.
Then it’s no longer a raise, now it’s just your salary, okay? So if we look at what actually makes people happy at work, we go to the research and try to sort of look at the, you know, the overarching things that make us happy at work. I think it comes down to two things. And those are results and relationships.
Results and relationships. Those are the things that make us feel good at work. If you have that, you’re happy. If your workplace gives you that, it’s a great workplace. So let’s look at those. First of all, results. And results is when you do a really good job. Okay, I am good at my job. I know my stuff. I can do this really well.
And that feeling of pride that you get from a job well done, that feels amazing. Makes us feel really good at work, makes us very, very happy. It’s one thing to be good at your job, but what really makes us happy is when we can see that we make a difference for someone else. We talk about meaningful results.
I can help my clients. I can see that I’m helping people who really need my services. I was talking to seriously, a young sewage worker in Denmark. He works in the sewers with his team. He’d been doing it for about four months. And he loved his job. He was really, really happy doing it. Because he knew that his, what he did was really important for all of us.
Can we agree on this? If the sewers don’t work, we’re all in deep shit. And I mean that literally. that made him really proud and really happy. Even though I guess you could call it a shit job. Being good at what you do and knowing that I make a meaningful difference. I help other people who need it.
Makes us really happy at work. So as a workplace, we need to give people the tools, the knowledge, the resources, and the time they need to do a really good job, so they can be proud of that. We need to give them the training they need to get better constantly. Here’s the problem. A lot of people do a good job, but nobody ever tells them.
They never hear a positive word, and I think that sucks. The important thing is that we do praise people who do a good job. In fact, we did a survey in Denmark two years ago. To uncover what made people unhappy at work in Danish workplaces. And the second largest thing that made people unhappy at work in Denmark was lack of praise and recognition.
And people said things like, you know what, I honestly believe I do a really good job, but nobody ever says anything. However, if I make just one mistake. Yeah. So, praise and recognition is a great way to show people that they make a difference, that they get results, makes us really happy. And it’s something we can all do every single day.
Just say one thing, praise must be genuine, must be real. You can’t praise people just to praise them, you have to actually mean it. So one thing that makes us happy at work is results. When you do a good job, and you can see that you can help someone else who needs your services. The other thing, relationships, is equally important.
And relationships is when you like the people around you. Okay, we don’t all have to be best friends in the workplace. That’s impossible. You get to choose your friends, you don’t get to choose your coworkers. But a nice mood in the office, mutual respect, when you can actually talk together, you can laugh together, you can relax together, that is a sign of great relationships in the workplace.
A good relationship, and I think there are four types of relationships you have at work. There’s your immediate coworkers, there’s your immediate manager, There are your customers, clients whoever you work for. And finally, you also do have a relationship to the company, to the organization in some way.
Maybe that’s a relationship to the CEO, the top manager. Maybe that’s a relationship to the company as a whole. And each of those relationships should be positive. The young sewage worker, the guy I talked to, he said they had great relationships in his team. Whenever they go into the sewers, they’re there for each other, they help each other.
And they really feel like they’re a group. He also told me when a young and new sewage worker, when he’s, you know, when he’s sort of initiated into the group, it’s the first time he’s been dipped. by accident, when you fall into, yeah. We’re talking head under. Yes, I know. Now you’re one of us.
So good relationships in the workplace are vitally important. This feeling that I belong, this feeling that they like me, they want me here, is vital for our, Workplace happiness. So how do you create that? There are many ways you can do it. It’s a very simple thing is breaks.
