Happiness

Jill Hamburg Coplan has an article in the February/March 2009 SmallBiz magazine about happiness. She says, “A decade of research suggests that happiness at work – defined as pleasure, engagement, and a sense of meaning – can improve revenue, profitability, staff retention, customer loyalty, and workplace safety”. She suggests that doing what they are best at bring people the most joy, and that the most successful companies are ones whose employees get to do what they do best every day.

I’m no psychologist, but her thesis makes perfect sense to me, and my observation of hundreds of small businesses over the years anecdotally confirms this in my own mind. Good managers, who are happy in what they do, tend to understand the interests and strengths of their employees and place them in positions that can best use those strengths. These managers have a sense of not only how to manage their people, but tend to make their workplaces cleaner, neater, brighter, and better to work in. People, while working hard, are obviously enjoying themselves. People tend to have fun not only individually but in their reactions to other employees, customers, and vendors. The benefits of people enjoying themselves at their place of employment (where they spend almost a quarter of their live) is obvious. The business benefits through greater productivity, less turnover, higher profits, and better good-will in the community may be less obvious. But it’s a win situation all around.

But fun has to start at the top. If the business owner is dour and doesn’t enjoy his or her job, no one else will either. Such owners need to examine their own interest, skills, and goals, and restructure their lives and businesses so they can find joy and have fun. They and their businesses will be better for it.