What Makes You Happy-- at Work

by: Gregg Gregory, CSP

Ron constantly complained about the work load. He was always telling his co-workers that he is so busy he is not sure when he will be able to get to the project they want. Week after week a new challenged was introduced.

Can you relate? Have you eve noticed that the person that is usually the busiest in the office is the one who never complains and just keeps trudging the path? And the one who complains the most is never as busy as they like to think they are?

That brings me to this question. What makes you happy? – and let’s keep this at work for now. Is it feeling valued? or maybe it is the supportive environment you work in?

On the other hand how important is the leadership in your organization? What about feeling like you are part of the collaborative effort to team success?

These are just some of the factors that Ranstad’s 2006 employee review researched and found what made employees happy. There are variances by generation which makes for interesting leading of teams.

For example 21% of Generation Y employees felt that collective commitment to objective made them happy while 34% of baby boomers felt this way.

Pathways to personal growth showed that 29% of the mature generation felt it made them happy and a whopping 58% of Generation Y and 52% of Generation X felt this was important to making them happy.

So what does this mean to leaders of today? We are facing a very unique time in our history. For the next few years we will actually have four very different generations in the workforce at the same time.

Why not have some fun in your organization? Go ahead and create your groups “Happiness Survey.” All you need to do is break down the employees by generation and have them rank their top five choices using a scoring system of 5 – 1 most important to least. Remind them this is how important each is to their happiness and NOT how well it is accomplished.

Here are a few you may want to use:

Feeling Valued
Recognition an appreciation
Shared vision

Feeling like part of a team
Leadership I can relate to
Pathways to personal growth
Fitting into the culture
Capable co-workers
Supportive environment
Having friends at work

These are just a few, so please feel free to add you own in and let us know your results. If you want we will publish them in an upcoming G-force newsletter.

Does this mean that leading the different generations need to be lead differently? Quite frankly to some degree the answer is yes. Diversity training will soon include age diversity for the simple fact that different generations espond positively to different motivators.

When Kyle met Donna’s 12 your old daughter, Ashley, a few months ago he asked her about how many friends she emails regularly and Ashley responded by saying she hates email because it is too slow. Ashley prefers to text message. So imagine what it will be like as Ashley gets into the workforce in another few years. Baby Boomers better be learning how to send text messages or they may be out of the loop with the work force.

Now on the flip side Generation Y employees will need to learn how to communicate with Boomers and Generation X if they want to advance in an established organization. Bottom line there is not single answer and for sure things will have numerous highs and lows over the next decade and beyond.

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Gregg Gregory is an award-winning speaker, sales trainer, and executive coach who delights audiences, electrifies managers and leaders, and transforms teams. Gregg Gregory is the recipient of the coveted CSP designation from the National Speakers Association, in recognition of his accomplishments in speaking and training.

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Gregg@teamsrock.com

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http://www.teamsrock.com