Canadian HR Reporter

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014 Canadian HR RepoRteR & StRategiC Capability netwoRk Hacking happiness Plasticity Labs uses social tools to provide real-time view of employee engagement By Liz Bernier Some of the debate in HR, whether your company is large, small or somewhere in between, centres around employee engagement. How important is it, really? Where does it fall on your priority list? Where should it fall? But Jim Moss thinks that debate is over. For the founder and chief hap- piness officer at Plasticity Labs in Waterloo, Ont., employee engage- ment and happiness matters more than anything else — it's a critical driver of business success because happy employees make for happy customers. "I call myself the chief happi- ness officer (and) I believe all CeOs should be chief happiness officers because you're either making your employees happy, your customers happy or your shareholders happy. Or, you're not doing a very good job," said Moss at a Strategic Capability event in toronto. that's why Moss' startup, Plas- ticity Labs, is all about using social technologies to track, measure and boost employee happiness and en- gagement levels at work. "neuroplasticity is the ability for our brains to change based on our behaviours, and the ability for our behaviours to change the way our brain is actually wired. And that's what we're trying to do with indi- viduals — we call it hacking happi- ness," said Moss. "We think that technology is actually quite well-suited (to that) because of the amount of time we spend with it, and the number of interactions that we make with it. Whether we like it or not, it's chang- ing our behaviours. So, let's try to channel that towards building posi- tive behaviours instead of building bad ones." Plasticity Labs has created a mo- bile and web app that teaches em- ployees the psychological skills of top performers, and measures their engagement. "One of the premises that we op- erate on is that times have changed significantly, specifically since the Industrial Revolution. We went through a period of time where we used to believe that we should work really, really hard and when we do that, we would accomplish some level of success. And when we have that level of success, then we would be happy," he said. "We've actually proven that there's a much better, more enjoyable way to accomplish all of those things… it is the learning and understanding of what it is that makes up happy. When we're in a state of happiness and flourishing, we're more likely to work harder and smarter — and the best part is it doesn't feel like work." e approach is based on positive psychology, said Moss. "Instead of focusing — like classical psychology does — on getting people who are mentally unhealthy back to a state of average mental health, we are focused on get- ting people who are of aver- age mental health and getting them to a state of optimum mental health," he said. It's not a magic cure-all and it won't get rid of all the little frus- trations of daily life, said Moss. "We don't make those go away. What we try to focus on at Plasticity, when we talk about workplace happi- ness and individ- ual happiness in the workplace, is that by hav- ing these skills that we refer to as 'workplace hero traits' — things like hope and efficacy and resilience and optimism, gratitude and empathy and mindfulness — we can handle (frustration)." Lessons in gratitude Moss wasn't always so mindful of "hero traits" like gratitude and posi- tivity — in fact, that realization was hard-won. In 2009, he was living in California with his wife and son, working as a professional lacrosse player. "All of a sudden, one day… I got up off the couch in the morning and I fell flat on my face. I couldn't feel my hands, couldn't feel my feet. So I kind of pulled myself up — I couldn't re- ally stand — and I crawled." he managed to call 911 and was taken to the hospital. "By midnight that night, they told me I had this autoimmune disease… and, essentially, what was happening was my immune system was attack- ing my peripheral nervous system." Moss — whose wife was more than seven months' pregnant at the time — was told it would be six to 12 months before he could expect to walk again. "Literally, the day before, I was run- ning up the Santa Cruz mountains, training for my lacrosse season. And, now, I'm being told that it's going to take me six or 12 months just to re- learn how to walk," he said. During his recovery, Moss needed a nurse to help him walk to the bath- room. And on his third day in the hospital, a nurse said some- thing that has always stuck with him. "She said to me, 'You know, you'd better get used to this because you're going to be like this for a long time.' And she was right to say that and, in fact, a lot of doctors and nurses like to prepare you for the worst. But it was not motivating," he said. Later that day, a different nurse came. "She entered the room and she had a whole different energy about her… she put her hand on my shoulder and she said, 'Don't you worry about it sweetheart, we're going to get you back on your feet in no time.' And I still get goosebumps (telling this sto- ry) because my whole life changed right then. I knew that whatever was going to happen in the next six months or year, I needed to feel like this. And I couldn't let the morning nurse de-motivate me for the whole day. "I decided I was going to learn ev- erything I could to put myself in the best mood that I could be in, every single day." Moss found that really simple tricks, including gratitude journaling, helped him manage his mood and maintain his positivity. And because he took such a proactive approach, the nurses were more solicitous and his occupational therapist and physi- cal therapist took time out on the weekends to work with him longer. "I literally doubled the output that I got from the people around me because I had a positive attitude and I was motivated. And, in their own words, I inspired them to do their job. Who would you rather work with? e person who's in no rush to get out of the hospital or the person who's going to give ev- erything that they have? "I walked out of the hospital six weeks later, two days before the baby was born." why does positivity work? e doctors were shocked by Moss' quick recovery. ey hadn't treated him any differently, they said — the only thing that was different was the way he impacted his mood and outlook. "So, why does gratitude work?" he asked. "Well, gratitude is a psy- chological trait or skill because it is something that can be improved… you can impact as much as 40 to 60 per cent of it. If you think about op- timism and pessimism, pessimism is 'What can't I do because of what I'm lacking or missing?' "Optimism is 'What can we do with what we have?' Well, when you take record of what you're grateful for, you're literally building a laun- dry list of what you do have." Moss and his family moved back to Kitchener-Waterloo and started the Smile epidemic — a social, digi- tal gratitude journal that eventually evolved into Plasticity Labs. "(ere is) this incredible desire to be happier in the workplace — and so we set off to try and do that," he said. "eighty per cent of people desire to be happier in their jobs. And, in fact, millennials — not only do they desire to be happy, they will leave their job (if they aren't). And they do put that responsibility on their employers." Social tools can help us create a happier workplace because they en- able us to measure happiness. "Social tools create a ton of data. ey allow us to be predictive, they allow us to understand what's going on, we can ask things in very up- front and open ways, we can make inferences based on patterns that we find," said Moss. And the key is to measure often. "We measure mission-critical data every single day — how often do we measure employee satis- faction?" he asked. "On average, organizations ask employees how they're feeling once every two to three years." But even annual surveys are not enough, he said. "Annual surveys are kind of like knowing the first and last note of a song… are you going to get a very good idea of what that song is like?" Social tools such as Plasticity's app allow organizations to measure employee satisfaction every day. "We need to be measuring all the time so we can find models of success and we can replicate those models," he said. "en, we can start to model and tune and slowly iterate and improve how we manage periods of change. "What we're trying to do is tune people's experiences of work, so we can smooth out the rough edges… Your culture is a product, and it's one of the most important products you're ever going to build." "we measure mission-critical data every single day — how often do we measure employee satisfaction?" Credit: MNSKumar/Shutterstock

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