Aoife O'Brien
If you're not happy at work, then you're taking that impact on your relationships, that impacts on your home life, it impacts on every aspect of your life. So, because we spend so much of our time at work, I think it's really, really important to make sure that you are happy at work because it leaks into every aspect of our lives.
Finola Howard
That's Aoife O'Brien, founder of Happier At Work and host of the highly successful podcast of the same name. She has a clearly stated mission to create happier work environments for businesses that are doing good in the world. And her focus on values as fundamental in her work is one of the main reasons I invited her to the podcast today. Values are how we steer our way towards the businesses we imagined when we started.
Finola Howard
I'm Finola Howard, intuitive marketer, your host and founder of How Great Marketing Works. I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not. And your story has to resonate with who you are, and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared.
Finola Howard
Today, I have with me the wonderful Aoife O'Brien, who very interestingly describes herself as a happiness at work expert. And that is how I'd like to start our conversation, which is, how did you come up with that? Where did it come from? And I'd love to know more.
Aoife O'Brien
Great question Finola. I suppose, for me, it really stemmed from some experiences that I had at work. So I have worked or I should say, I worked in the market research industry for about 17 years. I have worked in multiple countries around the world. I worked in London for a time and there, I absolutely loved my job. I also worked in Perth for a short time in something completely different doing recruitment and... layoffs or
Finola Howard
I also worked in recruitment. That's so interesting. Yeah, very good.
Aoife O'Brien
I loved my job there something very different. It was recruitment, but for the oil and gas industry, essentially. So hiring contractors, so as you know, bulk recruitment in a blue collar industry. Very, very interesting, steep learning curve, but I so enjoyed working in that organisation. And I also worked in an organisation that made me realise that I had completely taken for granted, the companies that I'd worked for previously, in that I loved my job, I was really happy where I was, but I moved on for various reasons. And that planted a seed. And it got me thinking, from an individual's perspective, how could I, as an individual make better decision around my careers so as to avoid working for a company like that one? And as a company, because they invested money in me, they sponsored my visa to work there, they paid me a really high salary and I left taking relationships with me, taking the clients - not taking the clients - but you know, I had built up great relationships with the clients. I'd built up a great knowledge base. And from the company's perspective, that obviously cost them a lot of money. So we've got - that sort of planted the seed and that's about 10 years ago now at this stage.
Finola Howard
Can I ask you...?
Aoife O'Brien
That planeted the seed initially. Yes, sorry. Go on.
Finola Howard
Sorry for interrupting. My question for you. I think it's so interesting that you made a choice at a point to consciously choose now to work in places that you could be happy in.
Aoife O'Brien
Well, the story, the story, the plot thickens as they say. I made a conscious decision to leave that organisation because I most certainly wasn't happy. And I do see other people who are miserable at work, but they're not actually doing anything about it. So upon leaving that organisation, I travelled and on my way to Australia, I travelled quite extensively as well. So after leaving Australia, I spent about a year travelling. So I had travelled all over Australia. I travelled around New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup, and on my way home, then I went to Fiji. I went back to New Zealand and went to Hawaii and I travelled around the States for three months. I came home for Christmas and then I travelled around South America, including Antarctica for six months. So lots and lots of travel, spending lots of money.
Finola Howard
Tell us about Antarctica.
Aoife O'Brien
Oh, I mean, a once in a lifetime trip. It was absolutely incredible. Learned and saw so much. They had these education sessions on and we went out in our little Zodiac boats to see the wildlife, to take photographs, to land mostly on islands of Antarctica. There was one time that we landed on the peninsula itself. But it was just incredible to see the landscape like you really do feel like you're at the end of the earth. And I just - I tried to make the most of it while I was there. It was just incredible. It was...I think it was a 13 day trip. But it takes two days to get there and it takes two days to get back and you're passing through the Drake Passage, which in itself is, you know, it's choppy waters. So you would notice in the dining hall that only about a third of the people showed up for dinner in the evenings, because most people were suffering from some sort of sea sickness. But yeah, no, it was just an absolutely incredible trip. Really, really incredible.
Finola Howard
Grand Tour.
Aoife O'Brien
The Grand Tour, exactly. So after doing all of that, I made a decision. I was thinking, "Well, I could go back to London", which is where I was working previously. I could go to New York, which is something I've always wanted to do or I could go back home to Dublin after seven years of being away. So upon, you know, my travels, I made the decision to go back to Dublin and I took another job. Probably because, you know, I just spent a year spending the money that I had earned in Australia. And people used to laugh at me saying, "Oh, you must have won the lotto". No, I just saved my money, you know? What's not to understand about that? So I landed back in Dublin and I took a job that I subsequently loved, I loved it for eight months. And then I was kind of, I ended up working there for four and a half years. But during that time, it was kind of up and down, up and down. And again, I got this idea that: How can I help people to make better decisions around their careers, but also from the company's perspective? You know, if I'm leaving that organisation, after four and a half years of knowledge, of client relationship building, and I'm leaving that organisation with all of that - that's costing them money. So both from the individual and from the organisation perspective, what can you do to retain people? What can you do to attract the right people in the first place? And so I left that. I was unemployed for a time and I started a diploma in executive and life coaching and then I started a Master's in organisational behaviour. And once I started doing the Masters, it was kind of like, "Okay, yeah, this is it. This is exactly what it is that I want to do".
Finola Howard
Was that - do you think that that, like, when I think about my career path, I always wanted to do marketing.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah.
Finola Howard
You know, so I was always very, very clear. I would have, when I was in first year in secondary school, I would have done the Mini Company programme. I would have done everything, would have always, even though I didn't know what marketing was when I started, do you think that you...because what's interesting about your story is you've come from market research, which is a very unusual starting point of market research to coming into a space that's HR, which is a softer skill, like you're thinking - qhen I think about market research, I think of data analytics, hard data. Fast, hard, hard, hard. And then soft, soft, soft goes to coaching.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah.
Finola Howard
So was it a surprise for you to have discovered coaching?
Aoife O'Brien
I mean, it's such an interesting point. And if I think back very early, now, when I'm talking about Leaving Cert time, I was interested in psychology. And I think at that time, with the points being, like close to 600, I probably talked myself out of it thinking, "Well, I don't want to go to Trinity. I don't, I'm not gonna get 595 points, or whatever it was at the time. Therefore, I'm not even going to bother applying". So I applied somewhere I wanted to go, which was DCU, doing something that had a mix of a few different things that I was interested in. So I did business, and I did business with languages, German and Spanish, which included things like maths, which I was good at, and it had a bit of psychology in there as well. But it was broad enough that I was - to kind of keep me interested, if you like. And if I skip forward, then to my application for the Masters and what I said and how I tied it all together, was that my interest really is in human behaviour, if you think of it like that. So from a market research perspective, what interested me most was, how are people behaving? So the example I often use is, if you run a promotion on shampoo, and people are buying two bottles instead of one bottle, we can analyse that to see how quickly do we - and this isn't looking at individuals. This is at an aggregate level. How quickly are people returning to that category? How quickly are people returning to that brand? Are you only attracting people who buy on promotion anyway and therefore you're not really attracting new loyal customers? So for me, the interest lay more in the people side of things and when I worked for an organisation which focused solely on sales and distribution, the interest really wasn't there. There's not a huge amount that you can do with the data. And then skipping forward kind of to now, it's how can we use people data to facilitate better decisions? So I don't really see it as fluffy at all. And maybe that's why, upon doing the coaching, I never really felt like this is not really my calling. My strengths really are in that logical, that data, that analytics, the math-sy hard science stuff, rather than the coaching can be a bit more fluffy. Although I did get really great feedback when I was doing the coaching, I never really felt that that was my calling.
Finola Howard
So interesting, the word 'calling' because as you know, from the way, from a lot of work that I do is I really start with kind of passion and purpose. And so data in some respect is data - people data, then is your passion, then? So let's talk about data now in this era where everybody is terrified of data and now we have the emergence of the idea of good data so that people can be less scared of it. So how can you help us be less scared of the data that you want to use to help people be happier at work? Is that a fair...?
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, I'll start by kind of telling a bit of a story, and give a bit of a background. I'm the kind of person - I never had this fear of the likes of Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn having my data. I was always a bit like, if they give me better ads then that's okay. And I watched that show on Netflix, then - and the name always escapes me, but it's the one that kind of shows what's going on in the background with the algorithms. And what really scared me about that was that it's not that they have your data, and it's not that they're trying to target you with specific ads, it's that they're trying to manipulate your behaviour. And that idea scares me that they would show me certain content that would change how I would naturally behave, or that they would manipulate my behaviour in some way.
Finola Howard
That's, I think that's a deep concern of other people. For me, it's also that they skew my worldview, that they - and they do this for so many people around the world that they skew what you see, and it means that we never fall upon something or... and even when you did your grand tour, you happened upon things that were unexpected and unplanned, and it changed your view. Yeah, I don't like the manipulative either. I mean, it's - and it also gives marketing a bad name.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, you know, you're trying to trick me in some way to buying something that I don't really need. But, I mean, I wanted to kind of highlight that, because what I do is not, it's not that. It's more - and if you think about the situation's I found myself in, and if we say, talking about things like flow and calling and things like that, when I was working on my dissertation last year for the Masters, I wanted to understand what was going on for myself, essentially. I was coming at it from that perspective, that I had these experiences at work. And one of my lecturers said, "Oh, that's an issue of fit". And I thought, oh, fit, I must research this and look into this. So I did tonnes and tonnes of research around this concept of fit and fitting in at work. And I know some people call it different things and they say it's culture, and we don't say fit anymore. And we say "culture match" and all this kind of stuff. To me, it's semantics. It's all the same. It really is about finding something that is a good match for you and for the organisation. And so I looked at, I wanted to understand more about this person-environment fit essentially. So when I talk about that, I'm looking at things like values, things like needs and things like strengths. So it's about understanding the behaviour in an organisation, and what are the values and it's not about like, "Oh, these are our values. Our values are that we are transparent, our values are..." but you have to live those values as well, Finola, It's not enough to just say that these are the values that we have. You have to demonstrate that that's how you make decisions, that that's how people behave in the workplace, that that's how people get promoted.
Finola Howard
It's consciousness as well, really. What percentage do you think of companies that are actually conscious about the reality of their values? And I know that's a huge question.
Aoife O'Brien
That is a huge question and really hard to tell. And maybe that is something that I will do some research on, and I've sort of, you know, I I see like, I'm evolving as a business to kind of going back to my roots almost and saying, I want to understand more about that, and I want to do research on it. So maybe that could be something where I just put it out there and I am about to launch a research survey, actually, at the moment looking at wellbeing at work, and what are companies doing? And how are people feeling at the moment with remote working? But I was, I'd love to understand that like, how many people think that their company have A) clear corporate values B) that those values are actually the reality of what's going on? You know, so there could be some organisations where they think, "Oh, yeah, we have our values, we're really clear about that". But equally, that's not actually a reflection of the reality of what's going on.
Finola Howard
It's interesting, because when someone says: I have it, sometimes it makes me want to say, "Prove it".
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, yes.
Finola Howard
From a marketing perspective, you know, of, predominantly, a lot of the work that I would have done over the years was around brand. And we would always have looked at values. And I've seen over the years, when we started, there were things like, "Oh, I don't have my values in place". And they'd Google some companies and they'll go, "Oh, let me see... that looks like a good one. Sure, we'll do that. We'll put that up on the website". And it never, and what has happened over the years is now that I partner with the HR person in the company, and we do exercises to extract the values and make sure that they're real and true. And it makes such a difference, because that does... and it's so funny, because marketing and HR have often been at loggerheads and true brand fit, when you're talking about fit, is where inside and outside. So the internal customer and the external customer are at one.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, totally agree. So it's, you know, that sort of forms part of it, is understanding the values. And so when you go to hire people, back to this idea of marketing, when you're putting your job ads out there, when you're telling people about what it's like to work in your company, that that's actually a reflection of the reality, and therefore you can attract the right people who will stay for longer. And that saves you money, essentially.
Finola Howard
And who will be happier at work.
Aoife O'Brien
And who will be happier at work. So the people who are hiring will be happier, because they're surrounded, and I don't want people to get confused with, you're just surrounded by... people use this term, often "like-minded people". And it's like, you should actually surround yourself with people who don't think like you. They can have the same values as you. But if they have, they need to think in a diverse way, they need to solve problems in a different way. So for me, the core of everything that you need is to have aligned values. So you have aligned values of - it might be respect, it might be authenticity, it might be transparency, things like that. So you can get behind this common way of behaving, but also have a different way of thinking, you know, and it's really challenging that concept. Because if you hire a whole load of people who would do, who agree with everything that you say, and who would do things the way that you would do them, then your company is going to stagnate.
Finola Howard
And also it's feels a bit like a seesaw. It's tipped to one side, you can't... And especially in this world now that we're talking a lot about diversity and inclusion. But I mean, diversity and inclusion should have always been there because it allows us to grow better because we don't get funnelled in our thinking and think too small.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Finola Howard
If you were going to hire someone now, with all of this data and this conscious choice around being happier at work. What were the steps? What are the steps you would take?
Aoife O'Brien
For me to hire someone in my business?
Finola Howard
Yeah.
Aoife O'Brien
That's a - yeah, that's a really great question. I think I would have to sit down and do an exercise because I think, I don't believe that your values change over time, necessarily. I think they're fairly static. But I would need to reflect properly and see, where do I show up in terms of my values in my business? So I have done a lot of values work through the coaching. And I do continue to think about, |Well, what are my values and how does that align?" And set about finding someone who has those similar values? And I think when you connect with someone, even if it's, you know, in this day and age, it's everything's via zoom, I think if you have similar values to someone, it becomes apparent very quickly, just through a conversation, because they, you can kind of get behind the same things if you like. So that's where I would absolutely start. So for me, the values piece is critical. The other piece that I speak a lot about and that I did my research on is needs satisfaction. So I think it's important to understand how taking on this role satisfies the person's needs. So what needs are being satisfied for them?
Finola Howard
Is this very tough, though for small to medium-sized businesses where they start this process with: I need help. But you're advocating that you start this process with, what do you need, not what do I need? Yeah,
Aoife O'Brien
That's, yeah, that's a good push back. That's a good push back. I think, if you want to retain people and I'm thinking of this from a solopreneur perspective. The needs part really comes a bit further down the line when you're trying to retain people and the research I did shows, as well that it takes, it's really three years that people become embedded in an organisation.
Finola Howard
That it takes three years?
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah.
Finola Howard
Wow.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah. So it's much longer than people think. They sort of think, "Oh, well, we'll do the induction for six months, it could be nine months, it could be a year", and then you're kind of off floating. And you're left to your own devices. But really, it's focusing on those first three years, and then it becomes more about loyalty and commitment after the three years are up, but it is, it's much longer than you might think. And that could be why a lot of people work in an organisation for two or three years. And then they're like, "Oh, well, I'll..." Either they say, "I'll give it two or three years, and I'll move on". They stay two or three years because of their CV, and they don't want it to look like they're moving around too much. Or they just get to three years and they're like, "This really isn't what I thought it would be. And they leave".
Finola Howard
And when you're - I just want to go back to the values piece for one second. Because it's a tough thing for a growing business, recruiting. So I have a rotten question for you now.
Aoife O'Brien
Oh great. Bring it on.
Finola Howard
So, you know, when you said that you get from the conversation, you'll understand. You'll get, you know, you'll feel if they have the same values as you. And my my thinking is, how do you know? And my question for you is, what is your killer question to assess their values are in alignment with yours? Because I presume you can't ask them: What are your values?
Aoife O'Brien
Most, to be honest Finola, most people don't know what their values are. I would argue most people do not know what their values are. And if you had asked me a few years ago, what are your values? What are your needs? You'd know, sorry, I would have been like, I have no idea what they are. But equally, you know when something feels not quite right to you. So using the example like let's say in Sydney, and I'm trying to think, I think for me, it went against my values, it went against my needs. Or my needs weren't being met at that organisation. But one of my values would have been like fairness and transparency. Let's say authenticity. So they made a lot of promises, said, "Oh, you're going to be promoted. And you're going to have this team". And then they didn't communicate anything with me and left someone else to communicate with me to say, "Oh, I'm your new boss now". And he had previously been one of my peers. So take from that what you will. But for me that was like that was just completely uncalled for. So I don't think there's one specific question but if you can ascertain what are your values, and it really, to me, that comes from the top of the organisation. That needs to be crystal clear at the top. Then ask questions around that and ask people to demonstrate their behaviour to find out well, what do they align with? What do they not align with? Or, like, let's say if you have a value of fairness, how have you demonstrated fairness at work? Or how have you demonstrated transparency? Or how have you had tough conversations at work? And asking people to demonstrate what they have done in the past and really, values is about behaviour and it's about how people behave and how they make decisions.
Finola Howard
You should say that again, talk to us more about that because really values are behaviour.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah. Yeah. It's how you - it's how you show up. So on an individual level, let's say, when you're making decisions on a day-to-day basis, if something doesn't feel right to you, then it's likely that it goes against your values. But if something feels like this is the right thing to do for me, then it does align with your values. So it shows up in how you make decisions and how you behave on a day-to-day basis. Be that in your personal life, be that in work, and if you're having to do things that go against those values, then you certainly know about it because it doesn't feel right.
Finola Howard
The feel right is interesting also. Because I'm going to come back to the hard and soft piece. Because I've worked with a lot of people where the feeling piece of understanding my feeling, my gut feeling, is not strong. They're very cerebral. So they will see - we have different types of people in the world. Right? And we love them all, okay? But what if you don't have that feeling sense? You know? And that's, I suppose you answered in saying, how do you demonstrate? You know, this integration between hard and soft is really interesting in this conversation with you. That's where we're wanting this people soft piece. Data hard piece evidence. Because sometimes I think people can't get that. What does it feel like? Because sometimes, especially if you're a small business as well, or maybe you're a new manager, and you're maybe hiring for the first time. That feel piece has no basis in experience. So they don't have... because often feel is based on experience, you know? What has gone before. So how do we help ourselves make those choices? Not by mistakes but by tools that we can use? How do we help ourselves feel better that alignment is happening?
Aoife O'Brien
That's a really great point, a really, really great question, because I think I am one of those people who is a little bit more cerebral as well. This feeling piece is relatively new to me, since I've been doing coaching, and it's about going from here, and going back down into your body. And so maybe then it's about how you make decisions, like how do you use your head to decide what to do? You know, and demonstrating that as well. So, you know, to go back to the example of Sydney, I decided that this is not the right place for me, because they made X, Y, Z decisions, and I'm not having it basically. I just said, you know, they told me, this one thing, and that doesn't, that doesn't sit with me at all. So I'm out of here. They made that decision. So I made this decision.
Finola Howard
Or perhaps the thing that we need to cultivate in ourselves nowadays is to understand that we have many data inputs, you know, in our beings, so one data input is our head. Another data input is our gut feeling of a situation. Another, you know what I mean? So that it's not just, it comes back all the time, this hard and soft, and that we need to integrate this way to make us better decision makers.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
Finola Howard
That's really good. That's a really good message. I want to stay with this topic of conversation. So we've explored a little bit around the values and the importance of values. And perhaps the insight that you've shared with us now is for the organisation - needs to make sure that they have true felt values, that they have reflected on and the small to medium size business who's hiring for the first time or the 10th time or whatever it is, enters into the interview room with an established set of values. Don't talk to anybody about bringing somebody on board into your business until you know who you are in terms of your values and your behaviour around those values.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree. And I'll kind of add a bit of a caveat for that, because it goes back to the point that you made earlier Finola around, you know, the business has a need that needs to be fulfilled. So what is the need that they have? And oftentimes, when we put out job ads, when we're looking for someone, it's to have specific skills, but actually, from the research, it's more important to make sure that the values are aligned. Unless you're in something very, very specialist. You can teach people how to do things. You know, you can teach people skills, but so long as you're bringing in someone who has similar values, they're going to feel right at home and they're going to stay in your business for longer
Finola Howard
That always makes sense for an organisation that can carry the learning curve. For a smaller business, when they're hiring early on in its life, can that business afford the learning curve?
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah. And it is. It's an investment of time, and it's an investment of energy. But I think if you get it right, then it's going to pay off because that person will stay for longer.
Finola Howard
Again, just interesting that you brought this idea of needs, and it's their needs. And is it their needs before our needs? I mean, obviously, it should be that both are in alignment. But in that the three year timeframe is scary, actually, you know, when I think about it, because so many people leave, because when that three years is up, it's kind of like.. it could go either way.
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, but if you've done things well, and if you've done things, right, and if you have met their needs, in a way that they need to be met, then they should stay for longer. I suppose this is the point. And I totally get where you're coming from in this like, is it our needs or is it their needs? I suppose it's coming back to well, what are your needs? And again, I would love to do more research in this area. So the needs that I did my research on are autonomy, relatedness and competence. They are universal needs, everyone has them. But the interesting thing is, you might have different degrees of those needs. So my need for autonomy might be stronger, but you can also provide too much autonomy to people. And if they have too much autonomy, then they need more guidance. You've just kind of left them to their own devices without giving them enough guidance to what they need. So it's finding that balance. But if you were to flip it on its head, one thing that, you know, I started making notes about this, to really understand from an organisation's perspective, maybe the opposite of autonomy is initiative. And so from an organisation's perspective, the needs an organisation has is someone can demonstrate that they have initiative, that they can just get on with things. That they don't need all that much guidance. And the other needs then for competence and relatedness. So competence might be the organisation needs people who are willing to take out time in their week to learn stuff, and that they have a learning culture and that they're willing to take on board feedback when things don't go according to plan. And the relatedness piece then is having someone who likes other people, and who likes interacting with other people, even if they are an introvert, but that they show respect, that they listen to what other people have to say, and things like that. So that would be my view on the needs side of things. And then this strength is more about the skills and the abilities. So what are the demands of the role? And how can that person meet those demands with the skills that they currently have?
Finola Howard
I mean, that's really good guidance for someone who's bringing people into their organisation, which is that initiative, competence, and relatedness. It's a really nice cornerstone to have. Like, thank you for that. I think that's a really nice piece to...
Aoife O'Brien
And again, I would love to do more research on that. And what does that look like? And are there universally, you know, similar to what individual needs are, are there universal needs that organisations have? And are there universal values as well? Like, is respect a universal value? Is transparency a universal value? If an organisation doesn't have respect, or doesn't have transparency, does that automatically mean that it's a toxic environment? You know, so many things I would love to understand more about.
Finola Howard
And that would actually be nice to have out in the ether that we educate ourselves of what is a universal need or a universal value? So that we know when to run for the hills.
Aoife O'Brien
Exactly. How do I know that I'm entering into this toxic work environment? What questions can I, as an individual, ask to ascertain what the values of the organisation are? And how decisions get made there? Yeah.
Finola Howard
Do you think that this is... do you think that it requires a consciousness in the organisation too? A consciousness beyond profitability? And that, you know, that whole triple sustainability argument of: people, planet profit. And where for so many years we've focused predominantly on profit, and people becomes, do you feel that the whole people area is still sidelined a little bit, but it's starting to gain momentum because it has a direct relationship with the hard data of the profit?
Aoife O'Brien
It's so interesting Finola because I suppose whether it's the circles that I move in, whether it's what I'm exposed to, going back to this algorithm thing, like everything that I'm exposed to is, it's people first. It's always people first. And, you know, thinking of my own podcast, the people who come on are the people who have similar views to me. And I haven't been challenged on that. Whereas someone said, "Would you not get on people who don't necessarily agree with you? But I also understand that it's your podcast." But I do try and challenge that thinking. But for me, from what I've seen, if you put people first, the profits are certainly going to follow. So it's not that - you're putting people first because it's the right thing to do. But also, the money follows from that, you know? Whether that's people are putting in extra effort, because you have the right people there, people stay longer, so you don't spend as much time or as much money having to replace them.
Finola Howard
I also wonder if there's a correlation between how you treat people internally and how you treat customers externally?
Aoife O'Brien
Oh, there absolutely is. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Finola Howard
Is there research that that brings that direct correlation? It's like, if we teach ourselves to be good to our own people, then we, by extension, we will automatically be more respectful. You know, we'll care more deeply for our customers. And if we care more deeply for our customers, how long will they stay with us? Will they stay beyond three years?
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah. And I don't have any research offhand. I do have anecdotal stuff that talks about, you know, imagine you're treating Kate. You're her manager, and you're not treating her very well. And then she goes to deal with the customer. But she doesn't really care about the customer, because she hasn't received that same level of care from her own manager. And she doesn't care whether the customer stays or not, because what's in it for her at the end of the day? You know, so only anecdotally, I've heard these stories, but I'm not aware of any research. But definitely after this call, I can go and look something up.
Finola Howard
It makes me then also wonder are we now starting to teach ourselves how to be better humans?
Aoife O'Brien
Yeah, I think it's about being more human at work, really. And bringing that human, bringing that vulnerability. And, you know, people aren't robots. You can't hire people to be robots. They do. You know, in the same way that you take your home life into your work life, you take your work life home, and I suppose that's the whole reasoning behind the happier at work. So because we spend so much of our time at work, so you know, could be eight hours a day. If you're not happy in work, then you're taking that - that impacts on your relationships, it impacts on your home life, it impacts on every aspect of your life. So because we spend so much of our time at work, I think it's really, really important to make sure that you are happy at work because it leaks into every aspect of our lives.
Finola Howard
And we need to choose that now. I think that the world will be better placed if we choose to kind of take down that shutter between work and home life and realise that we're humans in all parts of our life. That it's life, not just work and life.
Aoife O'Brien
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And interestingly, one of my - you know, I've had various conversations about this concept of work life balance. It's been called work life harmony. And I was like, "Oh, that's a really great way of talking about it". And then a very recent conversation, the lady brought up this concept of just harmony. It's just life, like, it's not work and life, because there's always going to be give and take when it's work and life. It's just one great big thing called life, you know, and work happens to be one aspect of it. But when you look at the holistic picture, then it's just life harmony. It's making sure that things, you know, I don't want to say balanced, because that implies that you're doing some sort of juggling act, but that everything works together, essentially.
Finola Howard
So it's really happier at life?
Aoife O'Brien
Oh no! I've got to change the name now.
Finola Howard
I think that's a good way, good place to finish our conversation. And I know that people would love to know more about how they can find out about you and please share with everybody, Aoife.
Aoife O'Brien
Absolutely, yeah, well, there's the Happier at Work podcast. If you just search for "Happier at Work". You will find out wherever you listen to podcasts, I have painstakingly made sure that it's available pretty much everywhere. So if I find somewhere that it's not available, then I tend to add that and you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. That's kind of my preferred social media, professional media, whatever you want to call it. And I'll spell out my name for those who are not listening in Ireland. It's a A-O-I-F-E O'Brien. That's O-'-R-I-E-N. And I'd love to connect on LinkedIn. You can also check out the website which is happieratwork.ie.
Finola Howard
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time Aoife.
Aoife O'Brien
Thanks, Finola. It was a pleasure.
Finola Howard
I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you'd like to find out more about Aoife, check out her website at happieratwork.ie and tune into her podcast of the same name. And if you'd be so kind to share this episode with someone you know who would find it valuable, I would greatly appreciate it. If you'd like to reach out to me about the podcast or anything else. Email me at [email protected] and I'll be back next week with another guest and until then, take care.
