What does happiness at work really achieve?

Happy people fix problems instead of complaining about them, they have more energy and are therefore more efficient at everything they do, have a more optimistic outlook and optimists are way more successful and productive.
Happy people are way more motivated – when you’re happy and relaxed, you’re much more open to learning new things at work and therefore increase your productivity. When you’re happy at work the occasional mistake doesn’t bother you much. You pick yourself up, learn
from it and move on. You also don’t mind admitting to others that you screwed up, but you simply take responsibility, apologize and fix it. This relaxed attitude means that fewer mistakes are made, and that you’re more likely to learn from them.
Happy people make better, more informed decisions and are able to prioritize their work. If people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas, and in our line of work creative ideas are the most important ones!
There seems to be a cognitive process that sets up when people are feeling good, and this leads to more flexible, fluent and original thinking.
So what do I do to make everyone at the office simply happier? It’s just simple things, but these little things make a huge change to someone’s perspective when they have a busy schedule. So I make it a priority to help others in the office when I’m a little loose from my own work – it could be anything from a phone call to filing to chasing payments etc. but a tiny bit of help here and there makes everyone feel better. Even a smile while passing in the corridor helps, so my main job is keeping a nice big smile on my face, it helps everyone to see a happy face in the office.
I love baking and baking makes me happy, so I also bring some of my happiness to work – and believe me everyone feels happier when there is a cake in the kitchen!

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Great to (almost) get to know you

We’re used to getting plenty of content against no apparent payment. The internet has dramatically increased the spectrum of services we’re no longer prepared to pay for. And we’re also used to having part with varying amounts of personal information in exchange. How often have you spotted something you really want to read more about, only to U-turn when faced with a form you’re expected to fill out? The trend towards increased information requirements has finally peaked, and the more clever content providers have started to reduce the request to tolerable levels. 2014 should see a steady decrease in the amount of information requested of us. If you’re hosting valuable content behind an info-request wall, it is time to seriously consider making your offering more attractive by being slightly less annoying.

I care as far as I can care

Our generation has inherited a planet that was mindlessly assaulted by our predecessors. Unfortunately, we’ve also inherited the guilt associated with that harm, even if we are doing more than all our ancestors put together to set our green globe back on track. We are now made to feel guilty for consuming practically everything that has a measurable footprint. This goes beyond its weight in Carbon. The footprint includes the practices employed for manufacture and the way employees are treated along the way. 2014 will see a rise in the demand for guilt-offsetting products and services. The most sought after will be zero-guilt, where the benefit to society or the environment associated with a particular purchase offsets the sum total of guilt associated with it. Show you care and present products that are visibly guilt-free.

I’ll get my watch to talk to your shirt

We have expected more connected devices for several decades now. Douglas Adams predicted a smart-device that taps into Wikipedia when he wrote the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the seventies. The trend for 2014 will go beyond connected devices used as communication and media consumption devices. It will see smarter, more bio-aware devices that relay data about your health to your medical carers. Cars that read your pulse, helmets that detect impact direction and shirts that detect breathing and movement will all be connected to the web for instant transmission of health-related information. As we’ve come to expect, the rich will have access to the finest healthcare first. But refer to the previous trend – we’ll see a much quicker cascade to affordability this year.

There is an ‘I’ in tribe

I have the ability to influence my immediate surroundings. I can wear headphones to make my world sound better, for instance. I can leave home an hour early to beat the traffic. But with more connected devices in everyone’s pockets, we are able to use information from across the tribe in any space to shape impromptu gatherings. Smart DJ software can read the musical tastes of everyone who has checked in to a bar and influence the playlist accordingly. GPS traffic data from multiple devices along the same stretch should shape traffic news. A percentage of vegetarians at any one beach should tell the right food truck to head that way…

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