The Happiness Scale

"Take care of your people. Create and sustain a business where they can live, not just make a living."
Gary Erickson, Clif Bar founder and author of, 'Raising the Bar'.

Is it possible to create a way to benchmark contentment in the workplace among employees? Can a manager use this tool translate into a healthier and more sustainable business model? I propose a new way of assessing the emotional health of the company; The Cooperative Engagement Scale. The CES will utilize previously untapped descriptive terms and adjectives such as; remarkable, insightful, dedicated, profound, historically motivated and resentful. Since working within the tight bubble of an office or plant is often very similar to working and living in a commune, a boarding school or Israeli kibbutz, we mangers should be able to create a model to assess workplace satisfaction as it relates to a productive group interaction and individual inner calm.

There are established methods of assessing an employees aptitude for certain types of jobs and tolerance to close working relationships with different personality types. The Big 5 Inventory Test is one example of this type of testing and is described as follows:

"This 44-item test, developed by Oliver P. John, Ph.D. and V. Benet-Martinez in 1998, is in the public domain and has been normed on tens of thousands of adults. It provides a score for each of the Big Five personality traits (Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extroversion and Intellect or Openness). Scores on these traits can often explain important issues for adults and thus simplify counseling efforts. For example, an extrovert working as a night janitor was depressed. Finding a day job, where he could relate to other people, went a long way toward relieving his depression."

The thesaurus generates a list of vague terms which may have meaning when placed in a structured context.
Contentment: satisfaction, ease, happiness and gratification

Happiness: approval, fulfillment, contentment

Cooperation: collaboration, teamwork, mutual aid

In Guy Kawasaki's excellent book, 'The Art of the Start' he details his own intuitive way of evaluating his own reaction towards his employees and business partners. Guy has named this The Stanford Shopping Center Test. He writes,"Suppose you are at a shopping center. You see a candidate (or employee or partner or service provider) before he notices you. At that point, you can do one of three things:

1: Scoot over and say hello.

2: Figure that if you bump into him, fine. If not, that's OK too.

3: Get in your can and go to another shopping center.

**If you picked number 2 or 3 don't hire that person. Life's too short to work with people you don't naturally like especially in a small, young organization"

Our new management tool, The Cooperative Engagement Scale should generate a clear picture of a prospective employee's inner calm and sense of purpose and well being. A few test questions might read like this;

1: If you had a Ferrari, what color would you choose?

2: How frequently do you say the word, 'scintillating' in the course of a normal day?

3: Do you let your four year old daughter watch Ultimate Cage Fighting competitions on cable TV?

4: How would you respond if your adult co worker expresses that he or she still believes in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny?

We all need to work together and to accept each other for our individual strengths and weaknesses. The Cooperative Engagement Scale will be the new way to benchmark our aptitude for cohesion and collaboration. I am working on it every day but would'nt it be great if we could use the internet to allow everybody to submit questions? Now that I think about it I wonder just who in my office actually watches Ultimate Cage Fighting?

References:
Kawasaki, Guy. The Art of the Start. Portfolio Books, 2004.

Erickson, Gary. Raising the Bar. Jossey-Bass, 2004.