SMILEY HAPPY PEOPLE 05/27/08

Words :: Will Jones // Images :: Anders Sune Berg (Bosch & Fjord), Jump Studios (Red Bull), Google (Zurich)

You’ve seen it before, the banks of clean white desks, each partnered by an ultra-adjustable high-tech office chair. Every workstation has an identical desk lamp, the latest state-of-the-art computer screen and a silver-grey in-tray. Row upon row of gleaming filing cabinets line the wall, the floor is swathed in a steel grey carpet. The space is packed to the gills with office equipment and yet it is minimal, pristine, an interior designer’s heaven. The perfect workplace: or is it?

Alexander Kjerulf doesn’t think so. “Workplace designers must get away from the trend that everything has to be the same, uniform,” he says. “It may look good in the adverts of glossy magazines but in reality it is very boring. How can you expect staff to be stimulated and excited about their work if the space they are in is repetitious and hum-drum? Workplaces need to inspire people, provoke positive thoughts and actions, and a bland backdrop of off-whites with row upon row of identical impersonal workspaces doesn’t do that for me.”
Kjerulf (pronounced care-oolf) is an oddball, an almost impossibly chirpy Danish guy who used to run an IT company. He’s not an interior designer or architect. In fact, he describes himself as an ex-IT geek. So who is he to critique the design our workplaces?
Well, Kjerulf is the Chief Happiness Officer! His website describes him as ‘the world’s leading expert on happiness at work’ and he’s recently written the book, ‘Happy Hour is 9 to 5: how to love your job, love your life and kick butt at work’. He preaches smiling at your staff, group hugs, flexi-time, taking problems to your boss, company days out, working less hours, praising people for their positive attitude, group decision-making… loving your job and fellow employees.
If this all sounds a bit too new agey, simplistic and idealistic, you’d not be alone. “I meet these attitudes all the time when I go to speak with companies,” says Kjerulf. “In the US there is initial derision at my ideas. Their culture is ‘hard work isn’t fun and that’s why you get paid for it so get on and do it’. In the UK people are less hostile initially but more skeptical. They listen to you and then snigger and smirk. However, in India, a culture where all life is sacred, companies are far more receptive to happy working. Similarly, in South America people are far more initially receptive to getting happy at work from the outset.”
This happiness comes in many forms and the design of your workplace is one of them. Kjerulf cites various examples. Red Bull in London, designed by Jump Studios, is an exciting new office space. It has meeting pods, a roof terrace and a slide, yes, a slide from the upper to lower floor. What if Innovation, an advertising agency, has a meeting bed within its offices, “so staff can kick off their shoes, jump under the duvet and have a meeting,” laughs Kjerulf. “It sounds crazy but what it does is put them in a good frame of mind as they enter the meeting and studies show that a positive outlook at the start of a meeting almost always leads to a good result.” We await the molestation law suit with interest!

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