How to find happiness at your work station
Kampala
Employees’ job satisfaction and happiness are key policies for many successful organisations. In the wake of the massive suicide rates at France Telecom (26 in 18 months) human resource practitioners are grappling with the question of how to maintain employee happiness during the drive for profits. But you too must play a personal role if you are to achieve happiness at the workplace.
Choose happiness: Happiness is largely a choice. I can hear many of you arguing with me, but it’s true. You can choose to be happy at work. Sounds simple? Yes. But, simplicity is often profoundly difficult to put into action. I wish all of you had the best employer in the world, but, face it, you may not. So think positively about your work. Avoid negative people and gossip. Find co-workers you like and spend your time with them. Your choices at work largely define your experience. You can choose to be happy at work.
Lovely things: You may or may not love your current job and you may or may not believe that you can find something in your current job to love, but trust me there must be some good in there.
Take a look at yourself, your skills and interests, and find something that you can enjoy doing every day. If you do something you love every single day, your current job won’t seem so bad. You can always make your current job work.
Take charge: A young employee complained to me recently that she wanted to change jobs because her boss was not doing enough to help her develop professionally. I asked her whom she thought was the person most interested in her development.
The answer of course was her. You are the person with the most to gain from continuing to develop professionally. Take charge of your own growth; ask for specific and meaningful help from your boss, but march to the music of your personally developed plan and goals. You have the most to gain from growing - and the most to lose if you stand still.
Take responsibility: People complain to me daily that they don’t receive enough communication and information about what is happening with their company, their department’s projects, or their co-workers. Passive vessels, they wait for the boss to fill them up with knowledge. Yet the knowledge rarely comes. Why? Because the boss is busy doing her job and she doesn’t know that you don’t know. Seek out the information you need to work effectively.
Develop an information network and use it. Assertively request a weekly meeting with your boss and ask questions to learn. You are in charge of the information you receive. Ask for feedback: Have you made statements such as, “My boss never gives me any feedback, so I never know how I’m doing.” Face it, you really know exactly how you’re doing.
Especially if you feel positively about your performance, you just want to hear him acknowledge you. If you’re not positive about your work, think about improving and making a sincere contribution.
Then ask your boss for feedback. Tell him you’d really like to hear his assessment of your work. Talk to your customers too. If you’re serving them well, their feedback is affirming. You are responsible for your own development. Everything else you get is gravy.
Keep your word: One of the most serious causes of work stress and unhappiness is failing to keep commitments. Many employees spend more time making excuses for failing to keep a commitment, and worrying about the consequences of not keeping a commitment, than they do performing the tasks promised.
Create a system of organisation and planning that enables you to assess your ability to complete a requested commitment. Don’t volunteer if you don’t have time. If your workload is exceeding your available time and energy, make a comprehensive plan to ask the boss for help and resources. Don’t wallow in the swamp of unkept promises.
Avoid negativity: Choosing to be happy at work means avoiding negative conversations, gossip, and unhappy people as much as possible. No matter how positively you feel, negative people have a profound impact on your psyche. Don’t let the negative types bring you down. And keep on singing in the car on your way to work, or start.
Professional courage: If you are like most people, you don’t like conflict. And the reason is simple. You’ve never been trained to participate in meaningful, conflict, so you think of conflict as scary, harmful and hurtful.
Conflict can be all three; done well, conflict can also help you accomplish your work mission and your personal mission.
Conflict can help you serve customers and create successful products. Happy people accomplish their purpose for working. Let a little professional courage help you achieve your goals and dreams.
Make friends: In their landmark book, First Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman list twelve important questions. When employees answered these questions positively, their responses were true indicators of whether people were happy and motivated at work.
One of these key questions was, “Do you have a best friend at work?” Liking and enjoying your coworkers are hallmarks of a positive, happy work experience. Take time to get to know them. You might actually like and enjoy them. Your network provides support, resources, sharing, and caring.
Job search: If all of these ideas aren’t making you happy at work, it’s time to reevaluate your employer, your job, or your entire career. You don’t want to spend your life doing work you hate in an unfriendly work environment.
Most work environments don’t change all that much. But unhappy employees tend to grow even more disgruntled. You can secretly smile while you spend all of your non-work time job searching. It will only be a matter of time until you can quit your job - with a big smile.
The writer is an Human Resource Manager and Consultant.
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