Happy Hour is 9 to 5 (16 page)

A study of over 20,000 female nurses in the US over a four-year period found that unhappiness at work is just as bad for your health as smoking
²⁰
.

Not only are happy people happier, they’re also healthier.

Happiness leads to success

A business coach who often coaches top executives told me that many of his sessions end with his clients realising that while they have indeed achieved all the outward signs of success, they’re just not happy at work or in life. They’ve got the corner office, company Mercedes, million-dollar salary, and huge stock options. But ask the right questions, and it turns out that many of them are lonely and lost. Their work brings them no joy, it holds no meaning, and creates no positive, lasting relationships. It also takes up all their time and keeps them away from their family and friends. One well-known top leader broke down crying over the realisation that most of his working life had been wasted on chasing money and power. Soon after, he quit his job and is now doing work he loves — at 1/10th his old pay.

This begs the question: What is success worth, if it doesn’t make you happy? The Dalai Lama once said:

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So I think the very motion of our life is towards happiness…”

He was talking about happiness in life, but the point applies equally at work. What is the point of spending most of your life at a job that doesn’t make you happy? What would you feel like, lying on your deathbed, having achieved all the traditional signs of success — a huge house, flatscreen TVs in every room, lots of cars, a huge salary, a lofty title and a corner office — if your career never made you happy?

Luckily, we are seeing the emergence of a new approach to work. Work used to be something we did just to earn a living. Increasingly, the point of going to work is to be happy.

So, should we just try to be happy and forget all about success?

This is where it gets interesting: In December 2005 a group of researchers published the results of a meta-study, which combined 225 studies on happiness that had examined the lives of 225,000 people.

The researchers concluded that while success does make you happier, there is an even stronger correlation in the opposite direction, i.e., that happiness will make you successful. The study also found that happy people are more optimistic, outgoing, likeable, motivated and energetic — all essential qualities for business success
²¹
.

This means that we don’t have to sacrifice happiness for the sake of success — a depressingly common assumption these days. In fact, the opposite is true: the happier you are, the more successful you will be. 

7. happiness is good for business

A
grande dame
falls ill

Irma is the
grande dame
of Danish retail. Founded in 1870, the company is the second oldest grocery chain in the world. It’s a multi-million-dollar business with 70 locations in and around Copenhagen.

However, during the 1990s the lady was ailing. The only people who still shopped there, the joke went, were little old ladies who did so mostly out of habit, because Irma was where they’d always shopped. Danes are very cost-conscious when it comes to food, and most of Irma’s customers had switched to the low-cost supermarkets that had appeared all over the country. For a decade, Irma had been losing its owner a lot of money.

Switching to cheaper products to compete with the discount stores didn’t work. An attempt to expand from Copenhagen to the rest of Denmark proved downright disastrous and had to be abandoned. Advertising campaigns didn’t work. The owner was on the verge of either selling off Irma, closing all the stores, or converting them to their discount alternatives.

In 1999 they went with a different solution, and in one last gamble made Alfred Josefsen CEO. The softly-spoken, 42-year-old Josefsen had a plan to fix Irma’s deep-set woes: “Put people first.” Sure, he would improve purchasing, distribution, cost-cutting and advertising, but Alfred believed that if Irma could make its people happy at work, everything else would follow.

To achieve this, Alfred focused on some specific areas:

1. Leadership training — All leaders go through leadership training focused on personal development, not on MBA skills.
   
2. Open communications — Alfred’s weekly newsletter to Irma’s people is not a press release or a corporate memo. It’s deeply personal and heartfelt, and has fostered trust and openness between employees and management.
   
3. Celebrating good results — Whenever Irma needs to celebrate, all employees are invited to a huge party. Part of this involves top executives getting on stage and singing the company anthem!
   

Results quickly followed, and Irma became profitable less than a year after Alfred took the reins. Today Irma is the fifth-best workplace in Denmark and the best retailer to work for in Europe. Irma’s employees say things like:

“Working for Irma is an honour.”

“We take care of each other. If a person seems to be doing badly, it isn’t just ignored.”

“Management has faith in us, that we can function independently.”

“Irma is the best place I have ever worked.”

Additionally, in February of 2006 Irma proudly announced its best financial result ever in over 130 years of doing business. This is the result of happy people doing great work.

Alfred has described the journey in his excellent book
Kære Irma
(Dear Irma) — It’s all about people, but it’s unfortunately only available in Danish.

The success factor

Here’s a short list of just a few of the critical success factors in business today:

• Innovation
  
• Customer loyalty
  
• Productivity
  
• High quality
  
• Great customer service
  
• Sales
  

Look familiar? Does your company face some of the same demands?

Now ask yourself where all of these things will come from. Machines? No. Improved business processes? Nah. High-priced consultants? Probably not. New IT systems? Nope. All of that can help, but is not the source of innovation, customer service, motivation or any other item on the list above.

All of these things come from people — and not just people, but happy people!

Alfred Josefsen had to improve Irma in each one of these areas. They needed innovation, they needed to cut costs, they needed to attract customers and improve service. Alfred had no doubt what his main point of attack needed to be: if he could make his people happy, all of this and more would follow.

Even if you believe that the only point of a business is to make money, you must still look after the happiness of your people, simply because studies show that happy employees will make you more money!

According to a study by the Great Place To Work Institute, which conducts annual international rankings of the world’s best workplaces, happy companies are a better investment. From 1998–2012, the S&P 500 stock market index rose by 4.81%. The 100 best workplaces increased their stock prices by 14.75% in the same period — three times as much
²²
.

According to Denison Consulting, unhappy companies in their study had an average annual sales growth of 0.1% from 1996–2004. Happy companies grew their sales by 15.1% in the same period
²³
.

According to HR expert David Maister, companies that enhance employee satisfaction by 20% can improve financial performance by 42%
²⁴
.

According to Gallup, happy companies have much lower employee turnover and higher customer loyalty, sales and profit margins
²⁵
.

These and many other studies show that the main advantages a business enjoys from happiness at work are:

• Higher productivity — Happy people work faster and more efficiently.
  
• Higher quality — Happy employees care about quality.
  
• Lower absenteeism — People actually want to go to work.
  
• Less stress and burnout — Happy people are less prone to stress.
  
• Attract the best people — People want to work for you.
  
• Lower employee turnover — Saving huge efforts in recruiting new people.
  
• Higher sales — Happy people are the best salespeople.
  
• Higher customer satisfaction — Happy employees are the best basis for good service.
  
• More creativity and innovation — Happy people have more ideas.
  
• More adaptability — Happy people are more adaptive and open to change.
  
• Better stock performance — For all of the above reasons.
  
• A better bottom line — For all of the above reasons.
  

Basically, happy companies beat unhappy ones in every area, and studies confirm this again and again.

The point — in one simple graph

The jury is in and the verdict is unanimous: happy employees are guilty of improving the bottom line. Businesses don’t have to choose between happiness and profits. It’s not a matter of either/or. Happiness is inextricably linked with profits. Soichiro Honda, the founder of (surprise!) Honda is with me on this one:

“Each individual should work for himself. People will not sacrifice themselves for the company. They come to work at the company to enjoy themselves.”

So if you take away only one thing from this chapter, please make it this graph: