6 Ways to Recover Joy at Work

First published on June 28, 2014. This is an updated version as a pre-read for an ongoing leadership course that I teach with Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

"Redesign your culture with purpose and unity to recover joy in your work community."

It is hard to find people who do not complain about their work or colleagues. But when probed further, many want to do fulfilling work and collaborate better with colleagues. Since so many people globally have experienced stressful working environments, it is no surprise that a recent survey showed that few people are eager to back to their physical offices, even the fancy ones. On the other hand, CEOs want workers who have a sense of joy and a positive working relationship because this reduces unnecessary friction and increases productivity, which will also result in a safe environment for ideas and innovation. So how can you bring joy back to your work community in this new normal?

From our 17 years of work in transforming organizations, we found that the solutions to bring joy back to work communities are surprisingly cost-effective and straightforward. Yet every year before Covid – in search of that joy – companies invested millions of dollars in organizing grand dinners and galas, conducting inspiring team-building retreats, and establishing frills like gyms and child-care to keep their staff happy. What this pandemic has proven is how much these physical assets and frills have failed. Though good in terms of intent, these initiatives can only have a sustained effect if the culture is transformed from the inside out. Without this transformation, even with the fanciest office environments, the most elaborate dinners, and galas, you will still find that people are highly unhappy in their work because the daily conversations no longer inspire, and work processes no longer nurture teamwork.

Investing in Meaningful Relationships is Key

The conclusion of our findings is:

"When companies regularly invest in building meaningful relationships and link that to the bottom line, they will naturally benefit from a joyful and effective work environment."

The situation right now is that many companies are 'unhealthy' in terms of their internal relationships due to a lack of sustained focus and activities to communicate and get people to work together. The company, like the human body, needs regular exercises to stay 'healthy'. But companies tend to shock the system by having once-a-year events or having extras on the side like motivational zoom workshops and outsourcing the creation of joy to an external party. But these things will instead increase cynicism, not joy, unless they are matched by a willingness to change the culture from within. Here are six simple ways – which we apply internally and urge clients to do likewise – to bring joy back to work:

1) Clarity of Purpose

People, in general, just want to get work done, and the biggest gripe often is, why am I doing this? So to think that people need to be inspired to do work is flawed. They need to know the reason and the value of the work that they do. While companies are great at setting goals, they are poor at explaining the rationale and the importance of doing things. To ensure that everyone understands, leaders need to do this regularly and at all levels. We discovered that when middle managers, the 'sergeants' of the company, fail to believe and are unable to articulate the purpose of work, it seriously impairs the ability of the company to execute effectively. So having internal workshops to raise the awareness of their value and impact is critical to communicating the purpose and value of work to all staff.

2) Designing Teamwork

Most people want to collaborate, but the way they are assessed and measured prevents them from doing so. Many companies suffer from 'excessive competition,' and this is designed in the system. In today's information-rich environment, it is a terrible situation because we should be encouraging a quicker sharing of information instead of withholding it due to the fear of losing out. So while companies celebrate the individual, it is essential to design policies and reward systems that recognize the team that made it happen. Recognize moments when departments reached out to each other to solve a problem. Prioritize recognizing or rewarding emerging leaders who are capable of nurturing safe environments for collaboration. There are so many ways to design collaboration, and interestingly this new-normal calls us to boldly create new ways to collaborate across the world and in different locations and cultures. To succeed, we need to be embracive in thinking and see this moment as an opportunity.

3) Managing Differences

It is usual for any working environment to have differences, but strangely enough, few companies have a mechanism to manage them. When relationships are broken, they are just left alone, no one wants to talk about them, and they are left to fester. These differences start to affect workflows very soon because Party A does not want to talk to Party B. Therefore, it is pragmatic for companies to have people trained in mediation and make regular interventions or have regular practices that allow people to address these issues calmly with proper facilitation. In one of the previous articles, we shared a helpful corporate practice, 'bonsai', where people are invited to reflect and affirm the other and offer ideas for personal improvement. We have seen that wherever this is practiced, differences are reduced because everyone has a better understanding of each other's working style, and it builds trust since people generally want the good of the other.

4) Putting Relationships First

We have discovered that when companies have this philosophy of putting relationships first, this care for others, people immediately want to do better for the business. So creating moments to know the other person once they join the company or allowing each person to share just three minutes on how their week went during weekly sessions, these little opportunities can go a long way to establishing a joyful environment. Therefore, it is essential to pay attention to the different clusters within the company, how do people fit into their respective environments in terms of relationships. By paying attention to the different dynamics, you will find that they do better at work once people are in optimal working relationships.

5) Relationship-based Human Resources

There are two broad functions for human resources: one is more administrative while the other is more about the relational dynamics within the organization. The latter is the one that is lacking in terms of leadership and resources. Whenever companies invest in good human resource managers who demonstrate an understanding of the relationships that matter and show empathy towards others, it is an excellent boost to the company's ability to manage talents to innovate better. We realized that when companies pay closer attention to the dynamics taking place and invest in resources to empower managers to increase collaboration, it helps to maximize knowledge development and innovation efficiencies.

6) Assess the Value of Joy at Work

Finally, the lack of joy at work is costly, and companies should face up this crisis and make an effort to assess the state of their internal relationships annually. Essentially, we found that the lack of joy is due to the following:

a) Lack of purpose

b) Excessive internal competition

c) Lack the avenue to express one's frustration to overcome differences d) Perceived lack of care from company and colleagues

e) Poor human resource management

f) Lack definition of what makes a joyful environment

Once companies make a realistic assessment and align it to their work's performance, the joyful strategy will start to show pragmatic results, increasing trust and collaboration. As shared earlier, it is not happiness that people seek at work, but they want to find it a joy to come to work. And this is not by chance but by design. The good news is, you do not need to spend much money to get there. You just need to find the time, make an effort, keep it constant, measure to see how it is going, and soon you will find that joy is returning to your work community.

About the Author

Lawrence dreams about building a united world through transforming the consulting practice to be inclusive in terms of practice and be truly multi-disciplinary in nature so as to impact a united world through the economy. A global thinker and speaker on Innovation by Design applied in transforming business, corporate cultures, and brands, he is also a passionate advocate to change the rules of the economic system towards one of communion. A long time participant in the field of interreligious dialogue, he was appointed by Pope Francis in 2020 to serve as Consultor the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue