Productivity and happiness

So what has productivity to do with happiness? EVERYTHING — and vice versa. But before you give up and think “what does this have to do with my organization?”, please hang on for just a few minutes more. Because this is where you can find the next big boost in your bottom line — with a short term of investment.

Research shows a 1:1 correlation between productivity and happiness. But you don’t really need scientific proof, because you’ve felt it yourself. You feel fantastic when you feel productive, and your productivity increases when you feel fantastic. It’s the classic chicken and egg story. And the same mechanisms apply throughout your entire organization.

The principle is simple, but people are complicated, which is why it requires understanding, skills and focus.

Five times higher bottom line
This model lies at the root of everything we do at Intenz. We help your organization achieve and maintain a strong mindset that creates a sense of happiness, and we design and train the skills to improve your behavior and thereby boost productivity.

But what if we’re already top performers, you might ask?
Then we may have to disappoint you, unless you know for certain that your corporate culture is entirely unique compared to the average of other well-run organizations. What we can say is this: All our data and analyses show there is always room for improvement, even in the most well-run organizations.

So, there’s no getting around it. To boost productivity, you must boost happiness – and vice versa. And then an increase in your bottom line will automatically follow.

Check out this video to learn why some people are twice as productive, ten times less sick, and remain in their jobs five times longer than others. Then compare those numbers with your own organization and do the math.

What would the impact on your bottom line be if your organization were twice as productive and your people remained in their positions five times longer? Then you will see why some companies can have a bottom line five times higher than other companies with similar opportunities.

Learn more about the model and its impact in this video.

Master the mindset – and embrace happiness

Brain research provides a helping hand. We now know that happiness is simply a chemical reaction in the brain. It depends on how many positive happiness hormones versus negative stress hormones we produce – and in terms of happiness, this is where your organization comes into the picture.

People are prime producers of both positive and negative hormones, and we firmly believe that work is the most important source of a happy and productive life – but it can also be the opposite.

We cannot control what happens in your employees’ lives, but we can equip both managers and employees with tools to develop and control their mindset and to create a common language to help improve each other’s state of mind and promote the happiness at work that is so vital for high productivity.

Right behavior is key

Behavior can easily become an organizational maze. Employees often adopt behavior that doesn’t align with the company’s strategic objectives, because they don’t have the prerequisites for choosing the right path. The human brain is programmed to take shortcuts, and unless we can identify and comprehend the right direction, we tend to stick to the status quo.And without the proper skills and guidance, we won’t change.

We can give your employees and managers the tools and skills to promote the behavior that will boost productivity and achieve your strategy and objectives.

Anchoring

A new strategy and new goals require change, and all change requires adjustments in mindset and behavior. Change means establishing new paths and habits. However, they can quickly disappear again if we return to the old, well-trodden paths. A good change process takes this into account and ensures anchoring. We work with six stages that help you reach your goals. The development must be sustainable, by which we mean that productivity and happiness must continue to be intact even during periods of major change, when the brain is forced to go against its nature.

If you want to get from A to B, you need to know both variables. It sounds logical, straightforward, perhaps even trivial, but in practice, both variables are often unknown or only vaguely defined. B represents your desired goals and the behavior required to achieve them. A is an analysis of where you are today. Once we identify the gap between A and B, we can work together to design, execute and anchor the process that will enable you to achieve your objectives. This is also where we reach into the toolbox and take out the elements to combine to achieve success – teaching, surveys, digital learning, coaching, profiles, and follow-up by both you and us.

Learn more about the six stages in this video on sustainable development.

Powerful communication and simple tools

Knowledge only has value when it is applied – and to achieve that, your employees need to understand what they are learning and to feel passionate about using their newly gained knowledge in their everyday lives. This places significant demands on the learning process.

1. The facilitators style and communication must be powerful:
To us, this means that it is passionate, engaging, fun and relates to your everyday lives and challenges. In order to make others passionate about a message, the messenger must communicate it with passion. It takes a special man or woman to do this – and to keep doing it often over several consecutive days. The Intenz consultants you meet will always have the personality and skills required to keep the momentum going from start to finish.
We instill energy, passion and motivation for your strategy and goals, and we add new insights in a way that’s contagious, promoting understanding and a desire to change behavior.
And we mustn’t forget one important detail – we learn best when the learning takes place in an informal and fun atmosphere.

2. It must be easy to understand: The forgetting curve is steep.
Generally, we only remember 20% of what we’ve heard after just one day. Our job is to make the complex simple – simple enough for your employees to understand and apply it.
We have therefore developed simple tools and models that make it easier for the brain to comprehend and apply what it has learned in everyday situations. We link all our knowledge together in models that everyone can understand and, in time, teach to others. For you, this means the learning is retained and can be converted – but it also means you can learn a great deal in a short period of time. This lets you save valuable time on training, as well as profiting on the learning in everyday situations much faster.

There are five levels of learning.
From being able to recognize something you have learned to being able to apply it in completely different contexts.
We work with you to define the level of ambition for the learning and to lift the bar and thus increase the value of the learning.

Survey

It’s not a matter of assuming – it’s a matter of knowing.
This also holds true when it comes to moving people and organizations in the right direction. We therefore take a natural data-driven approach to development, analyzing where people move, where they get stuck and what impacts their performance.

Digital

We incorporate digital learning into all the processes, where it adds value. It minimizes the cost of bringing people together, and it often improves impact and anchoring. We’re happy to supply content for your set-up, or we can supply both the content and the system for the course.

Some of the companies we work with