Employee Happiness: Get It and Inspire It

July 8, 2011 - PRLog -- I am a lover of the field of positive psychology, it always made so much sense to me to study the ways people find fulfillment, joy, meaning, connectedness and all the good stuff. I first studied the theories almost a decade ago while I was getting my BA in psychology. At that time positive psychology seemed to be just gaining mainstream momentum and I have enjoyed watching its popularity skyrocket. Incredibly, it has never occurred to me in all this time just what extraordinary value the field can bring to the workplace if understood as an applied science.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of my favorite positive psychologists. He is best known for his study of happiness and creativity and for his crazy name. Mihaly is the architect of the notion of “flow.” Which, as a singer/songwriter, I resonate with deeply. It is meant to describe the feeling of total immersion in what one is doing.  It is an optimal mental state of intrinsic motivation that leads to feelings of engagement, fulfillment, full absorption, and skill use—and during which worldly concerns such as linear time, hunger, the ego, simply go unnoticed more often than not. A key aspect of flow is that skills are being used to the utmost AND it is a joyful experience. Mr. C argues that when people achieve flow at work, they're more humane and successful – you can find this in his book, Good Business (Viking).

Don’t you agree that achieving flow throughout your workday would make you happier, more productive, and produce higher quality work? Doesn’t everybody want and deserve optimal experiences at work? As an employer, wouldn’t it be ideal if all your employees could find their flow? Ok! So, how do we translate this lofty idea of a precious optimal state into actionable ways to effect people’s experience at work?

Overall, it seems that a critical aspect of increasing flow for employees is investing in career development. The theory of flow states that a balance must be struck between the challenge of the tasks at hand and the skill of the performer. Both must be high or apathy is the result. How better to achieve this balance than investing in employee-centric career development solutions that successfully engage employees in seeking out their optimal role within their company?

Employees know best where that precious place of balance exists for them in terms of challenge level, skill, and potential for enjoyment. Employee-centric solutions are needed to enable employees to continually be looking for the next challenging project or role to stay engaged and in an optimal state for enjoying the production of high quality work.

Here at UpMo, we are designing just such career management solutions. We believe that organizations can hum with motivated employees experiencing happy, productive flow more often when given power over their career development in an authentic, tangible way. UpMo career management solutions empower employees to identify and move closer to both short and long term career goals by intelligently matching available jobs or projects at a company to an employees skills and career aspirations. In this way our employee-centric career management solutions help employees effectively find their flow – that optimal place where skill and the challenge of the work meet! This can drive employee engagement, raise happiness levels, increase productivity and quality of work, and lower employee attrition.

What do you think?  When was the last time you found your flow? Visit my corresponding blog at http://www.upmo.com/blog to join the conversation.

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About UpMo:
Employees Rule. UpMo provides the industry’s first employee-centric enterprise career management solution to emerging and large organizations. By helping people plan, pursue and manage their careers in a way that benefits both them and their companies, UpMo SaaS solutions help companies embrace employee mobility to dramatically increase productivity, reduce employee churn, and improve employee engagement. http://www.upmo.com