”Have a nice day”

Hugs

Your boss

”Arbejdsglæde” means ”Happiness at work”.

It is not a complicated thing: It only means that you go to work, and you like what you do!

You like your customers / your students, you like your boss, you like doing your job,  ---- that is “arbejdsglæde”

In Scandinavian countries “arbejdsglæde” is a known word, but in many languages the word does not exist.

Many  people say “Why talk about happiness at work? What matters is salary, bonuses etc.” People don’t care. But they should ….

“Arbejdsglæde” is not “job satisfaction”. Arbejdsglæde is what you feel about your job (happiness) whereas “Job satisfaction” is what  you think about your job (satisfaction).

You can be very satisfied, - but not happy. That is why “arbejdsglæde” is so important.

Everyone Can Have “Arbejdsglæde”.

Everyone can have “arbejdsglæde” and everyone ought to care about “arbejdsglæde” because everyone wants to spend time in life being happy, anyone wants a happy life and anyone wants success. 

About time:

If you ask psychologists,  “What do people spend most time on - from the cradle to the grave?” They would answer “Sleeping, working --- and watching television.”

So you spend more time at work than you do at anything else in life - except sleep.

When you spend so much time on something it must be something that makes you happy! 

About life:

If you want a happy life, - psychologist have found out that what means something is:

1: A good romantic relationship

2: Good friends

3:A good and meaningful job  

About success:

When you are happy at work you are more successful  because then you are more  open, optimistic, energetic, helpful, productive, creative, a faster learner, a better team partner. 

Herzberg

Already in 1959 Herzberg told us about the difference between hygiene factors and motivators.

He argued that there were certain  factors that would de-motivate an employee if they are not present. They would not in themselves actually motivate employees to work harder (hygienefactors).

However,  there were also factors that would directly motivate employees to work harder (motivators). 

Herzberg believed that businesses should motivate employees by adopting a democratic approach, by giving the employees more responsibility, more interesting work, more praise for a job done well. 

These “motivators” are the same factors that matter when we talk about “arbejdsglæde”  

How to Get “Arbejdsglæde” Incorporated  in “Learning to Be Happy”. 

The Danish partners have integrated “arbejdsglæde” in the project “Learning to Be Happy” as follows  

Questionnaires

Direct contact to management

Monday Mails

Participation in a conference about “Arbejdsglæde

Questionnaires 

We chose to make a questionnaire and  distributed it by Facebook  -- not directly in our school. A lot of people  - teachers but also many people from different types of jobs - responded, and it was  clear that when people started to think about how they felt about their jobs, lots of them found  that they  were basically quite happy . Lots of them sent us good ideas  how to get a “funnier” day.  One responded,  “Thank you for reminding me. Maybe I just forgot that I love my job?”. We had the feeling that the bare fact of filling in the questionnaires regained some “arbejdsglæde”.

Direct Contact to Management 

We could not tell the management of our school to appreciate good work and make  unexpected things at work, but we could send a mail to the management when some of our colleges (maybe in towns far from us) did some good work - and we did!

This little stunt resulted in many funny episodes - and lots of smiling faces.

Monday Mails

One of the questions in the questionnaire was, “Do you want to receive an “arbejdsglædemail” every Monday in the spring of 2015.

No one denied, and this was the way to distribute articles and videos about the subject.

Participation in a Conference about “Arbejdsglæde”

The VUC management supported the work about “arbejdsglæde” so as we got the chance to attend a major conference about “arbejdsglæde”. They supported us financially and we got the opportunity to participate. The conference will be mentionedsomewhere else on this site.