Jessica Pryce-Jones, author of “Happiness at Work” and CEO of iOpener, is the world’s leading expert in raising productivity through the Science of Happiness at Work. She and iOpener work with organisations, teams and individuals to achieve a sustainable and positive change in performance. She lectures and teaches senior executives at London Business School, Chicago Booth, Oxford (Saïd) and Judge Business Schools. She also coaches senior executives and leadership teams.
Jessica founded iOpener to help people to recognise and extend their capabilities. She is a frequent speaker and media commentator, having taken part as an expert in the BBC series “Making Slough Happy” and was featured in a CNN special.
Her main points for the interview were:
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People confuse happiness with joy. Research has shown that people need challenging tasks that they can succeed at in order to be happy.
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The five components for achieving Happiness at Work are contained in the model that came out of her research:
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The contribution you make;
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The motivation regardless of circumstances
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The culture (feeling of fit);
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The commitment (level of engagement for long term);
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Confidence.
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There are two extra points to happiness at work (1) achieving your potential and (2) pride, trust and recognition. Everything in the model locks onto these points.
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To increase your self belief the following can be used; mastery of things, what can you learn from others, persuasion from someone who knows you can, comparison to others i.e. if they can so can I, and understanding your internal responses (e.g. if you have less confidence when your are tired it is understanding that you are tired, not that you are rubbish at what you do).
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Her research shows that Happiness at Work is important as it influences productivity and health. A high level of engagement at work does not equal happiness at work.
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For managers to help their staff be happier they simply need to ask people what parts of their job they really love and what parts they really hate. Can their job role be tweaked to include or exclude any of these tasks? Don’t insist on people working in the office if they work better from home – give people the responsibility to control their own day.
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She spoke of the fact that being at work for endless hours won’t make you happy and at some point will make you less productive too. M&A (mergers & acquisitions) lawyers got a special mention of being unhappy at work – that’s what I used to do! She mentioned that this would manifest in your relationships and I know that for a fact as it can very tricky to put others first when so must of your energy is tied up with just making it through the day.
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If you think you are powerless to change the situation then your resilience goes down.
You can get a free happiness report at www.iopener.com/report
The next speaker is Arul Subramaniam is co-founder of Brainobrain, which is one of the world’s leading Children Institute for Self Empowerment.
