• Happy Christmas!
  • Opinion: Five ways to use ‘hygge’ to increase happiness at work
  • Karen Matovu(People Management Daily)19 Dec 2016

The Danish concept of hygge has been hitting headlines and bookshelves across the UK in recent months. Karen Matovu explains how we can implement it at work.

Denmark’s status as the happiest nation in the world has been attributed, at least in part, to hygge – the art of enjoying everyday life – and now the concept is making waves in the UK.

Not only has the word (pronounced ‘hoo-ga’) recently made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, but there are no less than nine new books being launched on how to live hygge.

As happy employees are not only more helpful, engaged and motivated, but also more creative, calmer and less likely to call in sick, why not use the concept to spread a little happiness and wellbeing across your workforce this winter?

Although your health and safety officer might not approve of you encouraging everyone to light a candle at their desk, there are five key principles of hygge that are more than safe to bring into the workplace.

1. Focus on the positive

When friends come together to enjoy hygge, talking about stressful topics is rare. Unfortunately, at work and in life, it’s all too easy to focus on what we haven’t achieved, instead of what we have.

A really powerful, hygge-inspired exercise is therefore to encourage employees to note three positive things that happen each day. Doing this regularly reprogrammes the brain to focus on the positive, which has been proven to boost happiness levels and increase our resilience to stress and anxiety.

2. Be kind to yourself

Instead of constantly chasing achievement, hygge is about taking time for yourself to create a sense of personal contentment. Whether it’s fully disconnecting from work once you leave the office, taking a proper lunch hour or rewarding yourself after completing a task with a break to do something you enjoy for 10 minutes.

That’s easier said than done with our busy lives and overwork culture, so why not give employees ‘permission’ to be kind to themselves by asking leaders across the organisation to role-play positive behaviours. Or you could run a competition that rewards the best examples of employees being kind to themselves, such as giving themselves an achievable deadline, instead of pushing themselves past their personal limits.

3. Live in the moment

Constant multi-tasking has become a way of life, but a major principle of hygge is about living fully in the moment – a concept we know as mindfulness. This is particularly difficult to do at work because we’re constantly exposed to distractions, from the constant flow of emails to interruptions from people who want immediate answers to things that could wait. To counter this you could consider running a mindfulness workshop to teach employees how to give up multi-tasking by immersing themselves in just one activity at a time.

4. Find meaning

Another aspect of hygge is about boosting energy levels by focusing on things that are personally meaningful. Ask employees to find more meaning in their work by getting them to think about which activities make them feel the most motivated and energised. Then consider introducing strengths-based performance management and development processes to get them to do more of what they’re naturally gifted at and enjoy doing.

As the Danes know, the simple fact is we’re more motivated, energised and likely to succeed when we focus on the things that we enjoy doing than when we try to force ourselves to do things we don’t really enjoy.

5. Connect with others

Humans are built to be social. It’s when we grow isolated from others that we get into trouble and become much more likely to experience low moods. While snuggling under blankets to watch a movie together might be a stretch too far for some colleagues, employers can do much more to bring employees together, from creating shared spaces for eating together – instead of in isolation at our desks – to rewarding people for helping and supporting each other.

Karen Matovu is a manager of training development and education at Validium

Wishing you a fantastic Xmas & relaxing New Year.

See you all in January 2017.

From the Clinical Leadership Team at Newcastle University xx