Page 17 - BusinessWest November 23, 2020

A Week’s Worth of Happiness at Work
‘Walking Wednesdays’ and Other Steps to Spread Some Cheer
By Pam Victor
this?”
That’s what you must be thinking, and as a
professional improv comedian and happiness coach, I’ve been asked variations of this question a lot lately.
“How can we think about happiness at a time like this? My response is: how can we not?”
And it’s a totally valid query. With restruc- turing, layoffs, kids schooling at home, and a worsening pandemic, we’re all being stressed and stretched to our limits. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much relief ahead any time soon.
How can we think about happiness at a
time like this? My response is: how can we not? Improv trains me to continually jump into the unknown and to keep moving forward together with as much joy and ease and play and laughter as I can possibly cobble together. After all, what’s the other option? (I tried hiding under my cov- ers for a while. It’s not a financially sustainable practice.)
Establishing happiness practices at work provides much-needed mental healthcare and resilience support for your teams. Because we’re collectively experiencing a marathon of stress, anxiety, and unpredictable change, with an unsettling amount of unknown ahead, prioritiz- ing happiness at work is more than just a goofy team-building exercise.
According to research findings conducted by
“Good grief, woman. How can we think about happiness at a time like
Julia K. Boehm and Sonja Lyubomirsky published in the Journal of Career Assessment, “happy peo- ple are more satisfied with their jobs and report having greater autonomy in their duties. They perform better on assigned tasks than their less- happy peers and are more likely to take on extra role tasks, such as helping others. They receive more social support from their co-workers and tend to use more cooperative approaches when interacting with others. Happy people are less likely to exhibit withdrawal behaviors, such as absenteeism ... happy people enjoy greater work- place success, and engage in more behaviors paralleling success, than do less-happy people.”
The good news is that happiness also feels great. The even better news is that it doesn’t take much to stimulate significant well-being ben- efits. Whether you’re remote or at the office, here are a week’s worth of simple but profound happi- ness practices to bring some more joy, ease, and laughter to your workplace:
Meditation Mondays: Start the week off with a shared, guided 10-minute meditation. Apps like Insight Timer, Calm, Ten Percent Happier, and YouTube provide a plethora of styles of medita- tion that start the week off with shared focus, grounding, positivity, and stress relief.
Treat-yourself Tuesdays: Encourage employ- ees to plan one experience of special self-care each week, such as picking up a favorite bever- age from a coffeehouse they’ve been missing, a delicious dessert, an extra hour of sleep, a warm bath, or sitting in the sun during lunch hour. Generate ideas and support by inviting folks to share their treat-yourself treats on a Slack chan- nel, e-mail thread, or during a weekly meeting.
Walking Wednesdays: Everyone takes a 10- to 20-minute walk after lunch each week. This two- for-one happiness practice delivers both exercise and time in nature, both proven to benefit well- being. Make it a shared walk — either virtual or in-person — and now you’ve added in a third happiness enhancer: personal connection.
Thank-you Thursdays: Each person sends
a note of thanks to someone else on the team who brought them joy or ease over the course of the last week. Leadership can model the power of gratitude by incorporating regular, heartfelt thank-yous into every meeting in order to make it part of the company culture. Thank-yous could be public on a #ThankYouThursday Slack chan- nel or private e-mails. To make it even more special, gift employees with a stack of company- branded thank-you notes to send actual hand- written thank-you notes, old-school style.
Gratitude is one of the most powerful hap- piness practices around. A regular gratitude practice is associated with improved mental
and physical health, increased resilience, and stronger relationships. Other research has shown that managers who thank their team may result in employees feeling more motivated to work harder.
Friday Freshen Up: In this simple but power- ful practice, the team spends 10 minutes straight- ening up their work space at the beginning of the work day on Fridays. It’s astounding how impact- ful these 10-minute tidying sessions can be after a few weeks. It helps individuals start the day with an accomplishment, and it’s delightful to
be greeted on Monday with a neater workspace. Add in some extra joy by playing 10 minutes of motivating, toe-tapping tunes (either in person or via Zoom) in order to make it a team-bonding experience.
It’s a common practice for improv comedi- ans to tell their teammates, “I’ve got your back” before a show. At this challenging time, your team needs all the extra support they can get. By demonstrating the value of happiness at work, you’re showing the team you have their backs ... and inviting them to bring their whole selves to their work. u
Pam Victor is ‘head of happiness’ (president and founder) of Happier Valley Comedy; [email protected]
Hospitality
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Mountain in Pittsfield will also require reservations for anyone who doesn’t have a season ski pass. The lodge will primarily be used for operational stag- ing and employee use, and the resort will add outdoor features such as firepits and seating areas while offering outdoor food and beverage service via hot-beverage huts, a walk-up bar, and a pavilion area.
As winter gives way to spring — a time when everyone is hoping a wide- spread vaccine program begins to put the pandemic in the rear view — “I think there will be pent-up demand” for things to do, Wydra said. “We have quarantine fatigue right now; people want to gather, they want to be with people, and that’s our business. I’m encouraged by news of a vaccine and
the progress made on that front. And people are still looking for safety pro- tocols. We’ve got to lead with the fact that they can have a safe visit in our region.”
In the meantime, virtually everyone in the tourism and hospitality world has had to pivot, sometimes dramati- cally. “I’m proud of our attractions and hotels and restaurants, all of whom had to break from traditional business models and alter the way they do busi- ness during the pandemic,” she said. “We really pivoted from being destina- tion marketers in the region to destina- tion managers.”
Explaining that thought, she said communication was ramped up among the region’s businesses and
Hospitality
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Mary Kay Wydra says the region’s tourism and hospitality sector was hit hard this year — but nowhere near as hard as metro areas like Boston.
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COVID-19 NOVEMBER 23, 2020 17
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