In perfect harmony
" I JUST want a peaceful, happy place to work. Is that asking for too much?' A crazy plea from an anguished employee? Perhaps, and crazy indeed because it is more wishful than asking for the moon. Just as it is difficult to get a harmonious planetary alignment, it is equally tricky to achieve perfect workplace harmony. This is the stuff an employer's dreams are made of.
Workplace cultures today are more diverse than they have been ever and this has led to an unending quest for workplace harmony. The quest becomes rather urgent and earnest when one is forced to spend considerable time with a cranky and listless lot every day. Is this what you see at the office everyday?
People not even pretending to work when you pass by them
When the BO of a colleague merits more discussion than unmet targets
When more employees are tolerated for what they aren't than for whom they are
The joy quotient at the workplace takes a serious dip when employees decide to leave their happy faces at home. Long faces, dispirited selves and joyless work groups are what mar the harmony in the first place. If you are an HR manager and have vowed to make your people less sorrowful, then know that your sacred duty is to be successful in your quest to make the workplace enjoyable and joyous and ultimately find some semblance of harmony at the end.
When we think of words like `pleasure' and `fun' work is not the first thing that comes to mind. Why, it's not even the 10th one! Work is, well work. And anyway doesn't `pleasure of work' sound too phoney? But, there are plenty of ways to add `light' to the workplace. Towards that end your workplace can sport some of these truisms:
Instead of having posters exhorting you to `Achieve', `Believe' or `Succeed', have posters of a goofing Garfield, or better still some Dilbertisms (that will effectively take care of any lingering blues) in the training rooms. Humour of this kind has a naturally positive effect on the way we perceive things.
Take a suggestion or two from your spaced out colleagues on how to make your environs zany... implement whatever ideas they come up with. If they feel that having a dartboard with the face of the boss embossed on it is stress buster then so be it!
Perfect workplaces can be eerie and unnatural - imagine a place where all employees are self-motivated, deliver top-level performance, there is no conflict and everyone works in happy coexistence! Create an imperfect workplace- it is more fun and the real thing.
There is no rule against being happy and lightening up one in a while. Of course, when your decibels of merriment start hurting the eardrums of others, you may not remain a happy employee anymore! You don't have to become the official joke-teller or the office comic, but you can cultivate a humorous deportment. The more self-effacing it is, the better it sounds!
Finally, as is our norm we would like to quote some studies which reveal that adults laugh only 10-15 times on an average per day. Compare this to a four-year-old child who laughs nearly 500 times a day! We can of course never compete with figures of that kind, but perhaps we can laugh more, at ours and others' idiosyncrasies?
Humorist Michael Kerr states, "The effects of a good laugh can last for up to 24 hours. One doctor found that a good 20-second laugh is equivalent to workout of 3 minutes on a rowing machine...In other words, our sense of humour is a sugar-free, tax-free, cholesterol-free, nicotine-free, fat-free, non-addictive, environmentally friendly stress-reducing option that doesn't require any special equipment, membership fees, a $200 pair of Nikes or a drive to the gym to use. We carry it with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year `till death do us part." Inspiring, eh?
So, do not let your HR departments slog away tirelessly (and painfully) to make your days more joyful. Instead take the initiative and send them a list of all the little things that make the big difference. And make sure you mention the dartboard!
PADMA RAMESH
padma.hyd@cnkonline.com
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