Creating Happier Work Places, with Jenn Lim

One of the original pioneers of workplace happiness, Jenn Lim is cofounder of the company Delivering Happiness alongside Zappos legend Tony Hsieh. Lim has 20+ years of experience in building long-term sustainable brands via happiness as a business model. Her methods are driven by data plus her successful track record working with 350+ companies worldwide.

SPEAKING.COM: Some of the research you’ve used includes regrets older people had looking back at their life. What are the most common “I wish’es” people had?

LIM: The study didn’t deal necessarily with older people, but rather “I wishe’s” from people that were about to pass away. Amongst the top five included, “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” and “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” But the #1 ‘I wish’ was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

SPEAKING.COM: What does happiness in the workplace come down to?

LIM: Feeling excited about the work you’re doing and having this meaningful, sustainable happiness ripple from the ME (individual) level to the WE (team) level and to the COMMUNITY.

SPEAKING.COM: What are the key pillars of the framework that Delivering Happiness has developed to create happier workplaces?

LIM: The model for creating happier, more engaged workplaces is like a pyramid; it has values and behaviors as the foundation, the science of happiness above that, and the higher purpose at the top. Each of those sections has its own concepts we’ve learned from our own research and experience in the culture space and they are essential for a culture that is both sustainable and adaptable.

SPEAKING.COM: What are some examples of how a company would “invest” in the happiness of its employees?

LIM: Most companies have a budget under Human Resources that goes towards work initiatives like company parties, birthday celebrations, etc. If you want to really invest in your employees, it’s best to have a budget dedicated to the full employee experience like career development, recognitions and rewards for achievements and milestones, events and outings, etc. It varies from organization to organization, so you have to go deeper in understanding the values of your employees in order to invest properly.

SPEAKING.COM: Many people are working whatever job they can to pay the bills. As a manager, how would you inspire someone who might not necessarily excited about their job?

LIM: What’s interesting is that a recent Harvard Business Review study found that 90% of Americans would be willing to take a pay cut to do more meaningful work. That tells us that people really want to feel that their jobs matter and are more purposeful and would rather be tighter on money than to stay at a job that was disconnected from purpose. To inspire someone in a meaningful way involves aligning their purpose to the purpose of your organization, creating intrinsic motivation to keep showing up and doing amazing work every day.

SPEAKING.COM: Most employees dread annual reviews. How useful are these and is there a better alternative?

LIM: They’re not useful in engaging your employees consistently throughout the year. To tap into creating a sense of progress, it’s more helpful to review your employees more often. And if your reviews are too time-consuming, see how you can create a less formal alternative or provide your employees with milestones along the way to their next review.

SPEAKING.COM: How did you end up working for Zappos?

LIM: After the dot com bust, I became an independent consultant. Zappos was one of my earlier clients.

SPEAKING.COM: You and Tony were selling shoes. How did you guys figure out that happiness was a driving component behind Zappos’ success?

LIM: While at Zappos, we were focused on creating a company full of people we wanted to work with to reach the goal of $1 Billion in annual sales in ten years. With that in mind, we poured resources into people and experimented with different concepts from positive psychology so people would want to come to work and do their best. If there hadn’t been a focus on culture, Zappos wouldn’t have reached its goal, one year earlier nonetheless.

SPEAKING.COM: What do you think are the biggest changes coming to the way we work?

LIM: I think the biggest change that’s already here is that we all need to be adaptable. Things are changing faster than we’ve ever seen historically, for better or for worse. What makes this change less jarring to our everyday lives is an understanding our own sense of purpose and values first. With that rooted, it’s about being more adaptable to the unpredictable changes that we can’t control, creating a true, authentic sense of happiness at work (and life).

To bring corporate culture speaker, Jenn Lim to your organization, please contact Michael Frick at: Mike@Speaking.com