Top tips to improve your experience of work, whatever your role

Everyone can take some steps to improve their own experience of work. Here are our top tips:

Experience of work

1. Stand up

Sitting is the new smoking! Sitting down all day is really not good for us. Every hour, get up and move about. Stretch out your body and release any pent-up energy. You will feel better and be able to focus more effectively when you settle down to work again.

2. Get outside

Actually, smokers do something healthy along with their bad habit. They use their breaks and go outside for a change of scenery. Yes, daylight makes us feel happier, but it doesn’t if you stay indoors all the time.

3. Make emotional connections

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, always asked his telephone agents to try and make an emotional connection with customers. So, if they heard a dog barking they might mention they had a dog too. Zappos always has great customer happiness scores plus amazing revenue growth.

4. Hold regular check-in meetings

Often, teams have weekly meetings and the agenda is all about tasks. Broaden them out to allow people to share what’s going well for them (or not). Over time, these meetings will help everyone get to know each other much better and build trust. Again, great for productivity as well as happiness.

5. Share a laugh

There is nothing worse than forced jollity. However, having a little bit of fun sometimes is good for everyone. Positive emotions have been shown to alleviate the negative physical impacts of stress as well as helping to build friendships and trust.

Read more about research on the impact of happiness at work on productivity here