Bringing joy back to the workplace

For many years I ran a staff book-club at work. The book-club was originally conceived as a lunchtime get-together aimed primarily at working carers. The idea was that we would get together over our sandwiches once a month and discuss a book we’d chosen, which would ultimately support our wellbeing.

For me, the book-club gave me respite at a difficult time in my life. My husband had recently been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and I found myself navigating a challenging path, balancing full-time work in a demanding role with my gradually increasing caring responsibilities. The book club was initially a welcome distraction from home, and gave me a reason to find time for reading, when time for myself felt like a luxury.

As the book club developed, I found something which I hadn’t expected: a new community.  The book club brought people at work together in unexpected ways. Most of the other members were not carers in the sense that I was. However, we bonded over a shared love of reading for pleasure. We read primarily fiction, so this was in no way related to our day jobs. The connections we made and sustained through covid and beyond created a richer workplace experience – something which transcended our roles and responsibilities and brought us together as a community.  With hindsight I would say this felt like joy.

Joy feels very much in short supply in the workplace today. Not so long ago there were rich opportunities to find joy in work through shared connections, and I believe that these sustained us through good and bad times, and ultimately led to stronger and more resilient teams.

We had many shared joyous rituals which seem to have disappeared from the workplace today.  People brought in homemade cakes on their birthday, or brought back goodies to share from their holidays. The staff room was often a locus for such small but meaningful interactions to take place, and through these people would engage with each other and gel.

Lockdown fundamentally shifted the way in which we work, and space pressures have led to the loss of many staff communal areas, so that we rarely have the opportunity to gather collectively outside of formal, structured meetings.

There were also opportunities to get involved in novel and interesting initiatives and projects, which might not be essential to a service or core to anyone’s role – but added value anyway. I remember working with colleagues I would not otherwise have met on supportive intranet guidance for working carers, for example. These provided an opportunity to step outside of your core role for a short chunk of time, building bridges to others in the process and working productively in loose teams to build something which was bigger than the sum of its parts and capable of sparking joy in those involved.

Today’s workplace feels much more instrumental. Everyone is so busy – with successive restructures and workforce reductions which increase the pressures on those remaining who are continually required to do more with less. Interactions which feel non-essential can seem like a luxury which we simply cannot afford when the inbox is constantly full, morale is rock bottom and staff feel chronically overworked.  Priorities inevitably have sharpened or narrowed.

Why does this matter? I argue that re-discovering joy in the workplace is fundamental if we are to build secure teams who can support each other moving forward. Insignificant but meaningful day to day interaction is core to what it means to be a human being. We are social animals who desire connection, and through strong connection we build safety which ultimately enables us to perform better as individuals and teams and to cultivate our purpose.

So as a leader, how do you bring joy back into the workplace, especially when teams are overworked and burnt out and stopping for a moment feels like a luxury you cannot afford?  We may no longer have time for the ‘nice to have projects’, but as a leader we can cultivate the small interactions which make a positive difference. Whether this is starting a meeting with sharing the small successes of the previous week, or taking the time to publicly thank staff for work well done. It can feel as leaders that we don’t have time to lift our heads above the parapet and notice the good work which is being done around us, but good leadership involves doing exactly this and it might help to start to lift your teams out of survival mode and back into finding their way back to joy.  What gives you joy in work and how can you share more of that with your teams?