New study shows we work harder when we are happy(www2.warwick.ac.uk)
www2.warwick.ac.uk
New study shows we work harder when we are happy
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/new_study_shows/
16 comments
> I know someone who works there will probably say it's not that good
I'm reliably informed that with laptops, remote working and a slightly more mercenary feel to the bar, a significant number of new graduates just don't place as much value in joining a chambers as they used to. Furthermore, a lot of the duties of clerks, once completely indispensible, can now be fairly easily absorbed by the barrister.
This feeling is understandable; I'm sure it can be difficult to justify the rent of a desk or room - all the nice feature you've mentioned are not things you can immediately put a £ amount to.
Middle Temple is certainly a lovely place though.
I'm reliably informed that with laptops, remote working and a slightly more mercenary feel to the bar, a significant number of new graduates just don't place as much value in joining a chambers as they used to. Furthermore, a lot of the duties of clerks, once completely indispensible, can now be fairly easily absorbed by the barrister.
This feeling is understandable; I'm sure it can be difficult to justify the rent of a desk or room - all the nice feature you've mentioned are not things you can immediately put a £ amount to.
Middle Temple is certainly a lovely place though.
I know I used to work at Holbourn and the contrast is amazing - fabulous Georgian buildings and parks you can see why baristers charge £1000 an hour.
I used to work in a building shared with one of the lesser law firms apparently they had complained to our CEO about the staff (of New Scientist) being scruffy and lowing the tone - being Journalists they retaliated by dressing even more casually :-)
I used to work in a building shared with one of the lesser law firms apparently they had complained to our CEO about the staff (of New Scientist) being scruffy and lowing the tone - being Journalists they retaliated by dressing even more casually :-)
On the other end of the scale, London's finance and insurance industries started in the noisy, bustling and egalitarian coffee shops of Exchange Alley where knowledge workers who didn't want to sequester themselves from the outside world operated.
Different strokes for different folks.
Different strokes for different folks.
having a quiet place to retreat to and work does not preclude meeting in noisy bustling coffee shops and bars - simply walk into any coffee shop or bar near Middle Temple and throw a brick. you will hit a lawyer. (please do not actually do this)
No one sane chooses to work exclusively in noisy bustling environment - bar managers go to a quiet room to count the cash and add the wages up. Torturers routinely use loud environments to break a subject.
Quiet controlled calm is good for humans. Bustling and networking is also good for us.
No one sane chooses to work exclusively in noisy bustling environment - bar managers go to a quiet room to count the cash and add the wages up. Torturers routinely use loud environments to break a subject.
Quiet controlled calm is good for humans. Bustling and networking is also good for us.
I'd definitely agree with this. I live very near Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and it's pretty much that exact thing.
It's a big chunk of land with large grassy areas, roads lined with towering trees, and a sky as huge as you can imagine. Here's a picture I took there about this time last year: http://i.imgur.com/IqlUadN.jpg
It's a big chunk of land with large grassy areas, roads lined with towering trees, and a sky as huge as you can imagine. Here's a picture I took there about this time last year: http://i.imgur.com/IqlUadN.jpg
Anecdotally, the PNNL people I've worked with were, well not very good at their craft. PNNL is in the middle of nowhere, unless you're at the top of the game doing highly specialized work there that truly can only be done at PNNL (and not kidding yourself either), you're out of touch and not contributing.
One dare might interpret this as metaphorical to an immigration policy. Control who operates in your jurisdiction if you'd like to maintain conditions.
given that even London Barristers operate on a pretty hefty meritocracy (assuming can they afford it and speak nicely in English for the judges), immigration policy in that case is competing to attract the best.
that seems a sensible immigration policy
that seems a sensible immigration policy
So, I think that there is something that a lot of businesses have trouble dealing with:
Employees are a leaky abstraction.
People are what you employ--and even if they present the IEmployee interface, they are still human beings who get mad, get happy, fight, fuck, flee, cry, laugh, and do all the other things that are more complicated than just taking in object A and emitting object B.
The best people I've worked with understand this, and have been understanding and supportive when things in life go sideways--and then their teams do the best work.
Especially in a knowledge/creative industry such as software engineering, it can be very hard to produce anything useful when you're stressed/scared/sad/pissed about something. Oftentimes, you need to go deal with those pesky facts of being a person and then come back, at which point your work will be much better and overall time loss lessened.
Trying to drive employees to produce when they're not at their best, or allowing them to drive themselves when they clearly have other things that need sorting out, is ultimately counterproductive.
For straightforward manual labor, one can make an argument that it shouldn't matter (and even then, consider accidents on the job when somebody's mind was on personal problems), but again creativity is very closely tied with how you're feeling.
Interestingly enough, this is a great time to plug universal healthcare--it helps lessen the burdens on companies and employees to deal with health issues, and that in turn helps plug some of the leakiness.
Employees are a leaky abstraction.
People are what you employ--and even if they present the IEmployee interface, they are still human beings who get mad, get happy, fight, fuck, flee, cry, laugh, and do all the other things that are more complicated than just taking in object A and emitting object B.
The best people I've worked with understand this, and have been understanding and supportive when things in life go sideways--and then their teams do the best work.
Especially in a knowledge/creative industry such as software engineering, it can be very hard to produce anything useful when you're stressed/scared/sad/pissed about something. Oftentimes, you need to go deal with those pesky facts of being a person and then come back, at which point your work will be much better and overall time loss lessened.
Trying to drive employees to produce when they're not at their best, or allowing them to drive themselves when they clearly have other things that need sorting out, is ultimately counterproductive.
For straightforward manual labor, one can make an argument that it shouldn't matter (and even then, consider accidents on the job when somebody's mind was on personal problems), but again creativity is very closely tied with how you're feeling.
Interestingly enough, this is a great time to plug universal healthcare--it helps lessen the burdens on companies and employees to deal with health issues, and that in turn helps plug some of the leakiness.
Interesting study.
1. Did they measure short-term happiness vs long-term happiness? The study involved making people feel good for a short period of time and a task whose duration was for a short period of time.
2. Is it enough to make your employee happy right before he starts on a task, even if he is miserable throughout the remaining period? What will be the effects of productivity in such a situation?
3. The paper refers to Erez and Isen (2005): "positive well-being induces subjects to change their allocation of time towards more interesting tasks, and that, despite this, the subjects retain similar levels of performance in the less interesting tasks".
Doesn't this mean that a person's state of happiness does not have much of an effect for doing mundane tasks?
1. Did they measure short-term happiness vs long-term happiness? The study involved making people feel good for a short period of time and a task whose duration was for a short period of time.
2. Is it enough to make your employee happy right before he starts on a task, even if he is miserable throughout the remaining period? What will be the effects of productivity in such a situation?
3. The paper refers to Erez and Isen (2005): "positive well-being induces subjects to change their allocation of time towards more interesting tasks, and that, despite this, the subjects retain similar levels of performance in the less interesting tasks".
Doesn't this mean that a person's state of happiness does not have much of an effect for doing mundane tasks?
Maybe I'm weird, but I work harder and produce better work when I have axe to grind, and unhappy. Also, I've noticed that happier coworkers eventually get lazier and more complacent.
I believe there's also some relation to the task/type of job you are doing, if you work alone or as part of a team, etc.
It's so funny that for 99% of people the word "hardness" is equals to "productivity".
See also Shawn Achor's "Happiness Advantage" for similar themes from an employee POV.
Evil boss would read these results as we are happy when we work harder.
News at 11
Long blog post on this question: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/gervais-macle...
The Theory X workplace believes people have to be intimidated into working. Theory X managers love to micromanage, to play psychological games, and to be mysterious and slightly terrifying to the people below them.
Theory Y holds that people do their best work when they're happy, enabled, and trusted.
Who's right? Mostly, Y. It is almost obviously true that people do their best work when happy. There is one issue with Theory Y workplaces, which is that while being decent and liberal in trusting people with their own time and energy tends to pay off without fail when creativity and output are measured, one does have to take a hard-line (even zero-tolerance) approach on certain ethical issues. It goes back to what Lord Acton said about judging talent at its best and character at its worst.
The reason there are so few Theory Y/R&D workplaces left is that, in the 1980s (Reagan Era) people sold out their companies to snag private equity jobs (thanks, Boomer yuppies!) making the case that maybe workers shouldn't be liberally trusted. The Theory Y workplace died out because it couldn't defend itself against what people became in a time of increasing economic inequality (more specifically: potential for personal advancement through unethical means).
As much as they're reviled here, the three-letter agencies (NSA, CIA, etc.) do a great job of this. They're Theory Y work environments in general (employees are treated very well) but take a "need to know" stance on high-level secrets that could kill people if lost, and have a zero-tolerance policy regarding leaks. They take a mostly Theory Y approach on peoples' ability to work hard given the right context, but are X (that is, very conservative with trust) on the things that need to be protected.
The Theory X workplace believes people have to be intimidated into working. Theory X managers love to micromanage, to play psychological games, and to be mysterious and slightly terrifying to the people below them.
Theory Y holds that people do their best work when they're happy, enabled, and trusted.
Who's right? Mostly, Y. It is almost obviously true that people do their best work when happy. There is one issue with Theory Y workplaces, which is that while being decent and liberal in trusting people with their own time and energy tends to pay off without fail when creativity and output are measured, one does have to take a hard-line (even zero-tolerance) approach on certain ethical issues. It goes back to what Lord Acton said about judging talent at its best and character at its worst.
The reason there are so few Theory Y/R&D workplaces left is that, in the 1980s (Reagan Era) people sold out their companies to snag private equity jobs (thanks, Boomer yuppies!) making the case that maybe workers shouldn't be liberally trusted. The Theory Y workplace died out because it couldn't defend itself against what people became in a time of increasing economic inequality (more specifically: potential for personal advancement through unethical means).
As much as they're reviled here, the three-letter agencies (NSA, CIA, etc.) do a great job of this. They're Theory Y work environments in general (employees are treated very well) but take a "need to know" stance on high-level secrets that could kill people if lost, and have a zero-tolerance policy regarding leaks. They take a mostly Theory Y approach on peoples' ability to work hard given the right context, but are X (that is, very conservative with trust) on the things that need to be protected.
It is just so depressing that people have to be told this. I don't understand how corporate types got so inhuman.
Apologies for the extreme simplification, but I think the time line assumed in your post is backwards: during the industrial revolution (and long after) there wasn't much of a reason to think about this, given the surplus of manual labor and fast technological advancements. It was not a very humane time.
You'll notice all successful corps have happy, hard working people, who believe in what they do.
They'll always eventually change into unhappy people with no cause left to work for.
That generally seems to happen because as soon as the company is successful, people see opportunities of getting rich and squeezing as much as they can from it "before its too late".
Ie the wealthiness of one seems to be worth making thousands miserable in their eyes. Since they're not directly making people poor and it takes some time I'm sure they don't even feel bad about it.
Of course, some people are better at keeping the ethical trajectory for a longer time and some companies are successful for a longer time than others.
I believe that the basic trigger for this to happen are called "free market" "capitalism" and "board of directors", "share holders".
It also means stuff will go up then down (and eventually up and down again and/or die). As human, we're pretty at good at going up/down in all areas.
They'll always eventually change into unhappy people with no cause left to work for.
That generally seems to happen because as soon as the company is successful, people see opportunities of getting rich and squeezing as much as they can from it "before its too late".
Ie the wealthiness of one seems to be worth making thousands miserable in their eyes. Since they're not directly making people poor and it takes some time I'm sure they don't even feel bad about it.
Of course, some people are better at keeping the ethical trajectory for a longer time and some companies are successful for a longer time than others.
I believe that the basic trigger for this to happen are called "free market" "capitalism" and "board of directors", "share holders".
It also means stuff will go up then down (and eventually up and down again and/or die). As human, we're pretty at good at going up/down in all areas.
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Wow, and we needed research to get to that conclusion! As if someone would have any doubt that this is the case...
I did all sorts of things -- and filled many often "menial" tasks outside of my official job description.
All I ever really wanted was a quiet workspace where I could concentrate. Corporate America nonetheless continually insisted that this one thing was impossible, "unproductive", and not going to happen.
"Happiness". Our latest buzzword. Well, my consistent message was that I needed this one thing to be "happy". And my results, even without this being provided, were far above average.
ALL this "talk" and "analysis" about what makes people "better workers", is -- put into this context -- bullshit. It is simply BULLSHIT.
That is it, in a word.
Companies that don't have "productive workers"? Stop looking at the workers. Start looking at yourselves. And if you can't actually listen to what your workers actually have to say? Well then, just fuck off.
All I ever really wanted was a quiet workspace where I could concentrate. Corporate America nonetheless continually insisted that this one thing was impossible, "unproductive", and not going to happen.
"Happiness". Our latest buzzword. Well, my consistent message was that I needed this one thing to be "happy". And my results, even without this being provided, were far above average.
ALL this "talk" and "analysis" about what makes people "better workers", is -- put into this context -- bullshit. It is simply BULLSHIT.
That is it, in a word.
Companies that don't have "productive workers"? Stop looking at the workers. Start looking at yourselves. And if you can't actually listen to what your workers actually have to say? Well then, just fuck off.
The basic "problem" with what you're asking for is that it inverts the power relationship between management and labor. In asking for a quiet space to think and act accordingly, what you're really expecting is autonomy. Within this environment, managers become facilitators / concierges. They are manifestly not the "leaders". Nor are they bosses in any traditional sense of the word.
From the perspective of capital, this isn't such a bad thing. After all, capital cares about the ends, not the means. Management, on the other hand, is intensely concerned with he means, and specifically, with any means that don't assure them a position of social dominance.
This is not a call to cut out the middlemen that sit between capital and labor. Rather, it's a suggestion that both capital and labor would be better off if the role and status of management were changed quite dramatically.
As an immediate consequence, professional management roles would start attracting a very different sort of candidate. Ideally, this change would represent a structural imposition of the No Asshole Rule.
From the perspective of capital, this isn't such a bad thing. After all, capital cares about the ends, not the means. Management, on the other hand, is intensely concerned with he means, and specifically, with any means that don't assure them a position of social dominance.
This is not a call to cut out the middlemen that sit between capital and labor. Rather, it's a suggestion that both capital and labor would be better off if the role and status of management were changed quite dramatically.
As an immediate consequence, professional management roles would start attracting a very different sort of candidate. Ideally, this change would represent a structural imposition of the No Asshole Rule.
There is a hypocrisy. Language about wanting "educated" workers who are "empowered" to solve problems.
The environment that is created and fostered is exactly the opposite.
I "paid my dues". I delivered, and exceeded -- as repeatedly acknowledged by my management.
Despite that, there was very limited acceptance of my input into what would make things better.
The problem with calling this a "problem", is that it puts the finger right upon the hypocrisy of ALL this language and discussion. Employers are saying one thing, and doing exactly the opposite.
My message to younger folks is precisely this: DON'T buy in to ANY of today's messaging.
If you don't see concrete, useful ACTIONS, it is simply, as I said, "bullshit". End of story.
There: I just saved you twenty years.
P.S. And that means actions NOW. Any and all language about what is to come? Empty. Just substitute a big NULL -- or perhaps even an error condition, if you perceive it may be part of an intentional effort to deceive that goes beyond just "normal" empty messaging.
P.P.S. Despite the validity of what I've said (I think), I find my personal bitterness is again spilling over into my comments. Time for another break from making them.
By the way, some of those "menial" tasks were -- of themselves and due to interactions with colleagues -- actually the more enjoyable parts of some jobs.
Too bad that so much of actually, physically "getting the job done" seems to be looked down on, these days. Do it too much or too willingly, and you risk getting pigeon-holed as either too culpable/readily-exploitable or otherwise not... "management material", for lack of a better expression for it.
P.P.S. I meant to add that in my experience, some of the specific events described in the OP were actually for me some of the most depressing experiences:
Official "parties" and "celebrations" one attended because it was mandatory or expected, refreshments and other expenses were all "budgeted" in a rather obvious fashion, and conversation had little to go beyond work topics or the same conversation that was already happening cube-side and "at the water coooler".
All the more sad when employees were expected to kick in to cover the expenses.
A genuine evening out that one paid for oneself and where one had some fun? Fine. These "we're going to celebrate now" events -- not so much.
I guess some people enjoy them. To me, much of it seemed terribly transparent and shallow. For my part, I still tried to and mostly succeeded in being genuine during them. But it was not that much "fun" and didn't make me very "happy", and because of my honesty often put me somewhat on the periphery, socially.
"Forced conversation", as the alternative. Ugh.
The environment that is created and fostered is exactly the opposite.
I "paid my dues". I delivered, and exceeded -- as repeatedly acknowledged by my management.
Despite that, there was very limited acceptance of my input into what would make things better.
The problem with calling this a "problem", is that it puts the finger right upon the hypocrisy of ALL this language and discussion. Employers are saying one thing, and doing exactly the opposite.
My message to younger folks is precisely this: DON'T buy in to ANY of today's messaging.
If you don't see concrete, useful ACTIONS, it is simply, as I said, "bullshit". End of story.
There: I just saved you twenty years.
P.S. And that means actions NOW. Any and all language about what is to come? Empty. Just substitute a big NULL -- or perhaps even an error condition, if you perceive it may be part of an intentional effort to deceive that goes beyond just "normal" empty messaging.
P.P.S. Despite the validity of what I've said (I think), I find my personal bitterness is again spilling over into my comments. Time for another break from making them.
By the way, some of those "menial" tasks were -- of themselves and due to interactions with colleagues -- actually the more enjoyable parts of some jobs.
Too bad that so much of actually, physically "getting the job done" seems to be looked down on, these days. Do it too much or too willingly, and you risk getting pigeon-holed as either too culpable/readily-exploitable or otherwise not... "management material", for lack of a better expression for it.
P.P.S. I meant to add that in my experience, some of the specific events described in the OP were actually for me some of the most depressing experiences:
Official "parties" and "celebrations" one attended because it was mandatory or expected, refreshments and other expenses were all "budgeted" in a rather obvious fashion, and conversation had little to go beyond work topics or the same conversation that was already happening cube-side and "at the water coooler".
All the more sad when employees were expected to kick in to cover the expenses.
A genuine evening out that one paid for oneself and where one had some fun? Fine. These "we're going to celebrate now" events -- not so much.
I guess some people enjoy them. To me, much of it seemed terribly transparent and shallow. For my part, I still tried to and mostly succeeded in being genuine during them. But it was not that much "fun" and didn't make me very "happy", and because of my honesty often put me somewhat on the periphery, socially.
"Forced conversation", as the alternative. Ugh.
tl dr: "talk != actions"
except it hurts more when its tied to income or employment.
It's interesting that the difference in productivity is only 12%. I'd think a happy developer would be significantly more productive than a miserable one, far beyond 12%, just from personal experience of coding when I'm down and when I'm not.
You are over-interpreting the study. The difference in productivity was for the task of adding five two digit numbers. This is a simple task very different from software development. The paper presents no evidence that effects on performance on this task is indicative of performance on other tasks.
Also, this experiment investigated short term happiness shocks, not long term general happiness levels. When the happiness shock was in the form of food, performance increased 15%.
Also, this experiment investigated short term happiness shocks, not long term general happiness levels. When the happiness shock was in the form of food, performance increased 15%.
Having done piece-rate work during college summers, I think that a 12% piece-rate difference would be much larger in software contexts. To me, software productivity is about maximizing the amount of work not done.
That is, productivity comes by things like preventing bugs, keeping the code base clean, finding minimal implementations, avoiding gold-plating, and seeing our way around apparently hard problems. I think that sort of calm cleverness, like most creative work, is worlds easier when I'm happy.
In making good things, I also draw a lot upon my empathy for users. When happy, my reserves of empathy are much deeper.
That is, productivity comes by things like preventing bugs, keeping the code base clean, finding minimal implementations, avoiding gold-plating, and seeing our way around apparently hard problems. I think that sort of calm cleverness, like most creative work, is worlds easier when I'm happy.
In making good things, I also draw a lot upon my empathy for users. When happy, my reserves of empathy are much deeper.
Doesn't this imply that if a company is spending more than 12% of its workforce-related costs on perks and other happiness-inducing stuff, then it could save money by cutting all that and hiring 12% more workers?
Perks alone will not make your employees happy. A company can spend infinite amount of money on perks and still have unhappy employees.
Respect, good management and what goes on in employees private lives have much bigger impact.
Respect, good management and what goes on in employees private lives have much bigger impact.
No, because perks aren't just there to make employees more productive. They're also there to make sure they stay at the company in the first place.
Excellent point. I hadn't thought of that in this context.
Not necessarily. For it to be true you would need to make the following assumptions:
1) Perks-related expenditure have a linear effect on happiness 2) Productivity is a linear function of the number of workers 3) The caliber of the 12% additional workers you'd hire after cutting costs is comparable to those of the workers you had before 4) Happiness only affects productivity, but not retention (turnover costs companies a lot of money in lost productivity) 5) There are no positive externalities caused by the presence of happy employees
1), 3) and 4) are debatable -- in many cases, the ability to make employees happy (and thus attract/retain strong performers) depends on the company culture, and having perks is an important part of it. This also means there are probably a lot of relatively cheap and cost-effective perks an employer can provide that can make employees much happier (fun company offsites, flexible hours, etc.).
2) is somewhat true for some industries, but tends to be false for knowledge workers like in the tech industry, where what you want is better quality output as opposed to simply more output. Also relevant is Brook's law ("adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"). Teams do not scale up linearly because it requires additional training, management overhead, and makes communication and coordination a bit more complex.
All these are fairly straightforward, but I think 5) would be interesting to investigate: from my experience happiness and enthusiasm tends to be contagious, and it's probably a good thing for a company to try to get a core of really motivated employees that can inspire others.
1) Perks-related expenditure have a linear effect on happiness 2) Productivity is a linear function of the number of workers 3) The caliber of the 12% additional workers you'd hire after cutting costs is comparable to those of the workers you had before 4) Happiness only affects productivity, but not retention (turnover costs companies a lot of money in lost productivity) 5) There are no positive externalities caused by the presence of happy employees
1), 3) and 4) are debatable -- in many cases, the ability to make employees happy (and thus attract/retain strong performers) depends on the company culture, and having perks is an important part of it. This also means there are probably a lot of relatively cheap and cost-effective perks an employer can provide that can make employees much happier (fun company offsites, flexible hours, etc.).
2) is somewhat true for some industries, but tends to be false for knowledge workers like in the tech industry, where what you want is better quality output as opposed to simply more output. Also relevant is Brook's law ("adding manpower to a late software project makes it later"). Teams do not scale up linearly because it requires additional training, management overhead, and makes communication and coordination a bit more complex.
All these are fairly straightforward, but I think 5) would be interesting to investigate: from my experience happiness and enthusiasm tends to be contagious, and it's probably a good thing for a company to try to get a core of really motivated employees that can inspire others.
This assumes production increases linearly with workers, which ignores any frictional/communication costs.
Hiring more workers to improve the output ? Not working in every industry.
I didn't read the study but this making the mythical man-month assumption. Also, let's say this is the case, unhappy tend to want to be happy and I don't think you will have creative people, such as programmers, very long if they are unhappy.
How do you define "happy"? One person's hell can be another person's heaven. It seems very subjective.
Obviously going for this years ignoble in economics then :-) to be followed up by an in depth proof that water is wet and kittens are cute.
Now how about doing some 'real' research on methods, which would make people stay happy at work.
Basically it's how knowledge workers with power and money have chosen to work for half a millennia.
It's how all knowledge workers should work if they want to act at their peak.
Don't really need a study to show treating people like cattle is not the way to get the best results.
Edit: I know someone who works there will probably say it's not that good, and the grass is greener I am sure but I swear it's hands down better to be a junior counsel in any of the Temples than pretty much any other office environment in London, outside of Universities and Monarchy.