Stop giving your employees things to make them happy.

It seems as though every consultant and their pet chihuahua has a take on the ‘changing face of the modern workplace’ - from the proletarian-esque struggle against the calls for return to the concrete jungles of their office towers to the dire need to have ethically sourced single origin coffee available from a barista stationed next to the bikram yoga studio on the rooftop wellness zone.

Tether this to the vociferous desire of every exec and HR professional to place the mental health and wellbeing of their people as a top priority and it’s a good time to be a consultant in the space. McKinsey themselves reported that 4 out of 5 HR leaders state mental health and wellbeing as a top priority for 2024 and 9 out of 10 organisations currently offer some form of structured wellness program.

But none of this is new.

It’s not even novel.

The Hamster Wheel of Wellness.

Sometimes the answer has been sitting there all along. In 1963 (yes that’s six decades ago now) HBR published a piece by Herzberg entitled “How Do You Motivate Employees” It read almost tongue in cheek but here’s the cliffnotes.

We thought people wanted less hours at work - so we did that. Only to find that people who enjoyed and found motivation in their job wanted more hours not less.

So we gave them more money - and discovered mo’ money, mo’ problems. We just incentivized people to want more money, which is an endless merry-go-round..

So we did fringe benefits - only to discover that it was a constant game of raising the bar, with anything under the newly raised bar now being considered as a non-negotiable right.

Maybe it’s not motivation, it’s the managers - so we gave them sensitivity training, communication strategies and 360 reviews. That spawned an endless cycle of mo’ meetings, mo’ reviews and enough feedback evaluation forms to sink a battleship..

And now we have arrived back at the ‘less hours at work’ stage of the cycle.

All this from a piece written in the 60’s, it could’ve been written yesterday and still ring true.

We just want you to be happy. Why is that so hard?

Should we believe the Organisational Theorists, the Productivity Engineers or the Behavioural Scientists? What about the Wellbeing Consultants, promoting everything from ‘explosions of joy’ to ‘manifesting your higher self'.

Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to invent a better hamster wheel and simply smash it to pieces.

There is one catch - the hamsters still have to want to get out of the wheel.

And that’s where the problem and answer lie.

Sisyphus was a Smart Arse.

In Greek legend the character of Sisyphus was a wily one. Cursed by Zeus for dobbing him in, he outsmarted Death and when finally cornered was sentenced to eternal damnation, forever pushing a huge stone uphill. Whenever he got near the top of the hill, the stone would roll back down, forcing him to repeat this seemingly pointless task ad-infinitum until the Heavens collapsed.

Only Sisyphus may have got the last laugh - as suggested by Albert Camus - what if Sisyphus was happy. What if, in accepting and being aware of his fate, he separated his happiness from the completion of the task and simply found joy in the work. Relinquished the innate desire to find happiness only in completion but instead within the work itself.

Sisyphus got the last laugh by taking his punishment and using it as an avenue to find fulfillment.

What’s this got to do with employee wellness?

Simple - we need to reconcile where people find happiness and fulfillment with both their and our understanding.? And it won't happen at the yoga station on the rooftop space.

Shocking as this may seem, we didn't evolve to be especially happy. Now that might sound rather depressing but consider that the pursuit of happiness has been a driving force since the dawn of time. Otherwise we would’ve got a few rungs up the evolutionary ladder and called it a day. I’ve got a fire and some cool cave paintings, no need to want more.

Happiness from an evolutionary sense is a dangling carrot that keeps us eternally and productively moving forward. In the world of ‘bro-science’ we call this ‘The Arrival Fallacy’

‘We didn’t evolve to be happy, but to believe we will be happy if we just achieve the next goal. So we seldom taste true joy but often pick up its scent just enough to keep us in pursuit.

Paradise is not a destination or a journey, but a horizon”

What if we have been looking at workplace wellness from a position of ‘arrival’ - if we just provide this benefit or perk or structure, then we will have ‘solved’ the equation.

Perhaps we have been fighting evolution - we are hardwired for the journey, not the destination.

Now don’t get it turned about - we experience happiness and joy and fulfillment - from all manner of things both physical and emotional - but these are moments, experiences and transient times - and we find ourselves picking up the scent of paradise and setting forth once more.

So how do we apply this in a workplace sense?

Stop building your concept of wellness around a mindset of a finite set of deliverables. Perhaps there is no mix of remuneration, hybridisation and perks that will unlock the door to motivation and happiness. So let’s pull apart ‘fulfillment’ instead.

What does it mean to be fulfilled?

“You’ll never remember the best day your ever spent sitting on the couch watching TV”

This was the sage-like advice a fellow Dad was telling me that he gave his daughters as their family outing to climb a local peak had turned from a sun filled afternoon adventure into a rain soaked sufferfest. “But you’ll remember that day Dad dragged you up the hill in the rain and you lost a shoe, and got covered in mud and came home and had a warm drink and laughed at the craziness of it all”

Fulfilling work is not easy work. It’s difficult and complex and pushes back and misbehaves at times.

You’ll never remember the report that was easy to produce and you handed in on time and we all went back to the office to start work on the next one. But you’ll remember the all nighters you pulled with the crew to secure that huge contract or rescue that client from disaster.

Employees are not inherently lazy, nor do they form an endless cue, Oliver Twist-like, please Sir can I have some more.

They want fulfilling work, a sense of progress and recognition as they contribute to something that matters.

We need to reframe the discussion around our concept of ‘work’. Explore the idea that your employees don’t actually want it to be easier - they just want to be better. Give them the tools, recognise them, remunerate them and build a mindset around finding meaning in the day to day of what they do.

Be honest - for most of us, we are going to spend a great deal of our working lives, feeling we are pushing a rock up a never ending hill. If you attach your happiness to arriving at the top of the hill and it being ‘done’ it’s going to be a long time in Hades.

But if you can find enjoyment in the work, in the struggle, in your capacity to perform, to constantly attain higher ground, then maybe, just maybe, you get to see your surroundings in a different light. You get to laugh in the storms, and truly celebrate the interim summits, all the while knowing that tomorrow will be a new hill. And that’s ok.

Hi, I’m Paul Watkins. I help teams develop discipline, antifragility and building an adventurous mindset, driving performance across their entire lives. Let me tell you a story.

I’ve published almost 70,000 words worth of articles on LinkedIn - but most of the good stuff lives on my substack - it’s a free blog delivered to your inbox from time to time, you can join all the other cool folk who have subscribed right here - paulwatkins.substack.com