What Really Makes People Happy At Work

 July 27, 2009

Interview with Roxanne Emmerich, author of Thank God It's Monday!: How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love

www.emmerichgroup.com 
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Mike Carruthers:
What really makes people happy at work?

Roxanne Emmerich:
There's interesting research on this that shows that happiness at work has to do with creating massive results - people feel good about themselves when they know that they've kicked some butt and took some names and that they're making good things happen.

   Roxanne Emmerich

Roxanne Emmerich, author of the book Thank God It's Monday!: How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love says the way for employees to be happy and organizations to be successful is for the people in those organizations to make some agreements.

Let me give you an example; one of the agreements that we ask people to make is this - we say, "Listen from now on zero tolerance for gossip, you don't get to say it you don't get to listen to it." If someone comes to you and they're gossiping simply say to them, "Sounds like you need to go talk to Tom". And now they're held accountable to making sure that person goes over and talks directly to Tom.

Another important agreement is no more excuses.

Many people think that excuses are the replacement for results. And so if you take away excuses then people start to get results. So from now on whenever you blow it just simply say, "I blew it and here's my massive corrective action plan to get back on track." If somebody gives you an excuse say to them, "OK got it, now how can you?" And you hold them accountable - it's about changing the language and getting people committed to holding each other to what we call "calling it tight". When people start to call each other tight in a loving but a very firm way, results shift immediately.

To here the complete unedited interview, click here.