What makes an organization happy???

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

hi friends
I just would like to initiate a discussion on the constituents of making an organisation a happy org. In my view EE is one such effort which could enhance employee satisfaction, so Employee Satisfaction should be considered first constituent. Then comes the satisfaction of the customers/clients which could be achieved by providing better value for money and excellent service quality. Then comes the management which of course would be interested in better profitability as well as better impression about the organization.
Another constituent could be responsibility towards society or as it is termed in management literature CSR. Socially responsible organizations and their effort to sustain such sense of social responsiveness can go a long way in making an organization happy.....
There could be many more such dimensions which we could talk about and explore...

[Robert Morris]

Kevin:

Your comments raise some questions:

1. If happiness is not a result, why make any effort help to create happiness for others such as helping them to be and do what is most important to them?

2. If happiness is a choice, why have so many people made that choice and yet remained unhappy?

3. Are you happy doing what you do in your work as an author and attitude adjuster? If you are, why do you assert that happiness "doesn't exist there"?

Frankly, I do not understand what you're talking about and would welcome a clarification. That will make me happy even if I do not agree with you.

Best regards, Bob

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

I strongly agree with you Bob.....
may be kevin has something different in mind....lets hear from him...

vijay

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

hi kevin

you mean Satisfaction does not lead to a condition/feeling of 'Happiness' The choice (as you call it) of happiness is not a result....But then why do we feel Happy.
Happiness (as I think, together with many of happiness researchers) is not an irrelevant word.

anyway, thanx for your views

vijay

[Kevin Burns - Attitude Expert]

I have been asked to clarify an earlier comment and so I shall attempt to do so here.

Happiness is not a result of finding the perfect job, finding the perfect partner, having a lot of money or by finally reaching retirement.

If one person on the job is happy and the person in the next cubicle (doing the same job) is not, it stands to reason that happiness is not a result of the work, the pay, the benefits, the environment of the job or the boss. Happiness cannot be defined by doing a job. Happiness cannot be the end-result of working or everyone doing the same job, the same responsibilities, responding to the same stresses and carrying out the same duties would be happy across the board. We already know that this is not so. We can't address people's home-lives, their values, their character traits or their beliefs on accountability. Therefore, it is impossible for the job to make anyone and everyone happy.

Happiness is a state of being and not a result. Happiness therefore must be and has to be a choice. There are so many extenuating circumstances that can allow people to be moody, angry, frustrated, negative and condescending. These are choices that individuals make in reaction to circumstances. There is no single event that causes people to live a life of misery and therefore the same must be true on the other end: a good job will not compensate for a lifetime of hardship and struggle and therefore no job can make a person happy.

If there were ten employees in a workplace and five seemed happy and five seemed miserable regardless of the fact that the culture of the workplace was positive, supportive, engaging and rewarding, would the onus still be on management to work harder to get the miserable employees to become happy? I doubt that any of these character choices of the miserable group could be blamed on the job. Therefore, can we take full credit for a group of happy staffers? People don't "make" people happy. Happiness is something we choose to feel. No one person or thing "makes" a person miserable. People, based on their personal philosophy and values, choose to feel miserable.

Let's not delude our thinking into believing that we can make employees happy. We can make the job rewarding. We can make the job fun. We can make the job engaging but that is no guarantee that the people we work with, at the end of the day, are going to be happy. Happiness is a choice.

People who have chosen to be happy and still are not, never were happy in the first place. Personally, have I found happiness in my work? Nope. It doesn't exist here either. There are parts of my job that I love. There are parts of my job that I despise (see travel, airlines, airports, security screening, long distances in rental cars, lost hotel reservations, bad meals in restaurants, bad service, bad coffee in hotel rooms, etc., etc.,). Does that mean I am an unhappy person? Of course not. But I made a deal a long time ago that I would help people get better at their jobs, improve their circumstances in life by improving themselves and develop a resilient attitude when life hands us crap. That deal, I am still keeping. That is my mission. That is the reason I get out of bed in the morning because I made a promise to do this and I keep my word. There is great reward in my work but I don't consider that to be happiness.

Any employer who believes that because of their own leadership, their employees will be happy, is self-deluding. I can't make you happy. I can bring some joy. I can bring a little peace. I can even bring an "a-ha" moment which opens you up to your own potential but I can not make you happy.

Clive Beddoe, former CEO of WestJet Airlines was once asked why all of his employees seemed happy on the job. He replied, "I learned a long time ago that you can't teach people how to have a happy personality. So we just hire happy people and teach them how to do the job."

The workplace will only be as happy as the people working in it!

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

wonderful.......I shall get back to you with my views lil later....

[Robert Morris]

Kevin:

Thank you for your comments. They are thoughtful, thorough, and carefully expressed. Although I disagree with a number of your opinions, I respect your reasons for them and, by the way, agree with others.

Best regards, Bob

[Jennifer Gladden]

It is great fun to read your conversations on the topic of happiness. I may be stating the unnecessary but happiness and satisfaction on the job are two different pieces for this discussion. I agree with Clive Beddoe. There are unhappy people who will never be happy in the workplace,or other places. Somehow, some of those unhappy people also derive satisfaction from the work they are doing. Possibly engagement is more about satisfaction than real happiness for those who just are not happy people. We are experiencing many efforts to measure happiness levels here and I am beginning to learn that the measurement that really counts, in terms of job performance, is the satisfaction factor. Happy would be nice but satisfaction could become the more realistic goal for employers.
Thanks for listening, jennifer

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

hi jennifer
Good to get your comments....and many of your views are right. As far as 'unhappy people being satisfied at work' may not be a general phenomena, however there might be people in this category. But can we really generalise? Or else do we have more people falling in this category as compared to the 'happy people being satisfied with jobs'.
Yes you are right Engagement is more about Satisfaction than happiness.....See I think I mentioned in some of my postings earlier on this network................What I feel is that.........................Engagement determines Satisfaction and satisfaction leads to happiness and we all as individuals as well as as institutions strive for happiness.....

Just my take.... lets get engaged...........

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

HI kevin
Sorry for being so late. Nonetheless your posting has been in my mind all the way.
I still feel that we can play a role in making others happy, in satisfying others needs, in doing what others expect us to do, by being tolerant to certain behaviour, etc etc. And it does somewhere makes the other person happy.
Yes to some extent I can say it is one's innerself that drives him to have an attitude of a kind which results in his feeling of happiness. So it is ONESELF, if you call it a Choice...than may be yes it is the choice of the person to lead a happy life or otherwise, irrespective of the provisions, facilities, QOL, friends, kids, around himself.
The process of induction, orientation, training etc would certainly make a person comfortable at the job front, however it would certainly improve his satisfaction level. Exceptionally, yes there are people who have an attitude of complaining, so you provide them all the facilites, all the bests of the world still they wont be happy on the other hand exceptionally there might be people who are happy in all the conditions of life and face everything with a smiling face. Hence I feel majority lies in between and if efforts are made these people could be moulded towards having a positive attitude of leading a happy life.
My final take would be : Organizations do play a role in making its stakeholders happy!

vijay

[Jesse Domingo]

The discussion has been on air for a while yet allow me to add my token reply...
Vijay, to be happy is to simply get what one wants...
from the stockholders down to the littlest wo/man in the company.
Therefore, working as a team and listening to each others' needs is the key.

Jesse

[Vijay Kumar Shrotryia]

True that one feels happy on the basis of fulfilling what he wants (Satisfaction led Happiness). However Jonathan Haidt is of the view that Happiness is a sense which is inner self and once a person is able to detach oneself from the material things (Buddhist view) one feels happy. (Happiness Hypothesis).

Now if we relate it to the organizations, an organizations has to see what its stakholders want (as you say) and fulfil it, on the other view (happiness hypothesis), if it can keep serving the society, and its stakeholders honestly without being much bothered about its profitablity, it can still lead the breed of Happy Organizations....

Thanx for your views.

vijay

[Jesse Domingo]

Yes, Vijay. And that translates to "Social Responsibility."
But just within the Organization... it's a matter of empathic listening.

Jesse