Happy Hour is 9 to 5

Research presented in this book claims that almost half of all employees feel that they are not happy at work and Kjerulf shows ways in which these negative feelings can be transformed. A Dane, he says his country even has a word to describe happiness at work – Arbejdsglaede.

Happiness in the workplace, he says, is not about perks such as salaries and cars, it is about relationships and fulfilment and that is something that holds true across all nationalities. Far from being a fluffy idea, companies such as Google, IKEA and Lego are making happiness at work part of their agenda as they recognise that happy employees do a better job.

The key is for senior managers to find happiness themselves and then to spread this feeling.

This involves measuring how happy people are and making specific plans for happiness in the same way that you would plan other projects and initiatives.

Among the simple “no cost” ways of creating happiness are praising good work, surprising colleagues with random acts of kindness and making a list of the positive things that happened at work – assuming you can find them of course.