Why Happiness Is the New Productivity in 2020

Can you believe it? The majority of people don’t like their jobs. In fact, that’s probably pretty easy to believe. In fact, maybe there’s a high likelihood you don’t really like your job either. An interesting Gallup poll shows that worldwide, only 13% of people say they’re engaged, highly engaged in their work. 67% of people say they’re not engaged, and 24% call themselves actively disengaged. These are the people who sabotage their workplaces. I mean, look at this horrible state where just such a small fraction of the workforce is actually enjoying the work. Think of the volume of human misery that’s involved in that, but more than that, think of the ridiculous economic loss, thinking trillions of dollars, where there’s just this phenomenal lost productivity. And then, consider this: happy workers are 22 percent more productive than unhappy workers. 22 percent! It’s a phenomenal increase in productivity to simply get people to see their work is a place they want to go, where they want to do their best work, and that’s what this video is about today.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. 22%! Imagine that, a 22 percent increase in productivity. Then, even if you’ve got a whole bunch of workers in your organization that are already, you know, reasonably happy or at least neutral, imagine if their increased productivity were five or ten or fifteen percent. What a difference that would make if you had increased productivity like that month after month, year after year. Well, that would make all the difference in the world. It would make the difference between successful organizations and unsuccessful ones, and lots of organizations are figuring this stuff out.

The basic reality is this: that happy brains are better brains. The more happy we are, the more energy we’ve got, the better our broad and accurate spatial perception becomes, the better we function in terms of our interpersonal skills, our relationship quality goes out. Happy brains are shown to lead to higher function cognitively, like we’re literally smarter when we’re happy. We have better access to our memory, we’re better problem solvers, and we’re even more creative. Happy people tend to be more committed and more achievement oriented. So there’s a ton going on that we know from excellent research results in this productivity gain that happy workers bring. And yet, we still have a lot of people working in an old organizational context, a paradigm that doesn’t work.

It’s the old carrot and stick approach. “I’ll pay you more if you do well and I’ll kind of punish you and eventually fire you if you don’t do well,” filled with recriminations all along the way. And that model, at its most basic level, always remains. You have to pay people to perform, and you have to ultimately deal with people who underperform. But the mechanisms by which we get high performance are very clearly around creating positive workplaces and the research is so solid on this. So today, I’m just going to give you three tips.

The first one is: create social time and space in your workplace. People need to feel like they’re part of a team, that they have a reason to come and socialize with people at work. One of the greatest, most satisfying things for people who love their work is that they have friends at the workplace. And so when you create that social time in space, people enjoy their work more, they feel a connection, a sense of belonging. This is relatively easily done. It’s sometimes as simple as finding, at the end of a hallway which is a kind of use of space right now, I put two or three chairs together, there in a little table, and have impromptu meetings there, sometimes and encourage people to sit and socialize.

Have a really inviting lunchroom, have people work in pods, create these social events like ping pong at lunch or lunch and learns and things that bring people together. And certainly, some people won’t participate, so what? Many people will and by simply having a conscious attention to creating social time in space, you’ll increase the happiness in your workplace.

Secondly, build a culture of appreciation and this is not pat on the back, and overly dramatic, “Thank you, you did such a great job,” and speeches at the front of the meeting room. It’s often simply recognition. It’s saying, “Gee, I really saw what you did yesterday and it made this difference in the customer’s life,” or “The way you helped your colleague do this, that or the other thing,” and describe what you saw. You don’t even have to say thank you, but people will feel like they’re being witnessed in what they bring to the workplace and then they’ll bring more of their best stuff. So build a culture of appreciation.

And the third tip is simply this: invest in the growth of your people, both personal and professional growth. And yes, again, a small percentage of your workers won’t appreciate this, but most people will really gravitate to that and value what the employer is bringing into not only their professional skills but the personal skills that they’re learning as well. The personal growth that they get, and people flourish when they’re growing. You know, there’s a saying I use quite often: “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” And when people feel like they’re growing, then they’re going with you, and they become more loyal to it.

And I’ve got another tip here: go and see my video that I produced, I don’t know, some months ago, that was called “The Four Steps to Positive and Productive Meetings.” It’s got a very clear-cut model to bring more positivity into your meetings, which so often are drudgery for the participants. So there it is, there’s a way to make your life and your organization’s life more productive by simply investing in happiness.

If you liked this video, please click the little like button, share it, and if you love this kind of content, subscribe to my channel and you’ll get a new video every Sunday morning with content just like this. I’m Paul Chrisman. I’m your happiness expert. Thanks for watching.