Jochen Menges of Cambridge Judge Business School discusses how to create happier employees in the new issue of strategy+business magazine published by PwC.
An interview with Dr Jochen Menges of Cambridge Judge Business School on how to create happier employees is featured in an article in the new issue of strategy+business, a quarterly management magazine published by some member firms of the PwC network.
Current happiness and wellbeing initiatives at companies are a “good start” but “fall short of expectations” because they focus on relieving stress rather than underlying issues that led to such stress, says Jochen, University Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge.
Personalisation is a key to creating greater happiness at work, he says in an interview with the publication. “Because emotion is closely linked to behaviour, if we were able to individualise emotional experiences in organisations, we’d go a long way in facilitating innovation, productivity, and engagement.” Too often, he says, bureaucracy gets in the way of corporate happiness initiatives.
Leaders are important in creating workplaces with positive, upbeat emotions, often by identifying a common emotion in groups of people and becoming a member of the group by expressing the same emotion, says Jochen.
This ties to the thread running through all of my research: Getting emotions right – through formal, structural means and informal, cultural means, and, most important, through the right leadership – will be the key to the survival and success of organisations in the 21st century.