Saturday, December 24, 2016

Last day in Cristo Rey

Last day in Cristo Rey - our friend Pastor Carlos helped us meet some families in need and we distributed lots of fruit rice beans and other essentials we purchased from the markets in TipiTapa. Nice to support the local economy as part of the Lykki mission.The children and families we amazing. One mother and her children had just ran out of food with no prospect of more food in the near future. Timing was perfect.











Friday, December 23, 2016

Fri 23rd Dec, 2016 was...Festivus!

Everyone likes to enjoy the holidays in their own special ways, but one holiday stands out more than the rest. Festivus, a holiday that seems as a joke but in all reality is a popular holiday growing through the masses in the United States. Let’s dig deeper into the past to find the origins of this plain, yet popular holiday.o enjoy the holidays in their own special ways, but one holiday stands out more than the rest. Festivus, a holiday that seems as a joke but in all reality is a popular holiday growing through the masses in the United States. Let’s dig deeper into the past to find the origins of this plain, yet popular holiday.

History of Festivus
Ironically, Festivus has a very odd and amusing start. It was conceived by author and editor Daniel O’Keefe and was celebrated as early back as 1966 by him and his family. But, how did Festivus become so popular if it was just a family tradition? To find that out, we must move forward in time to an episode of the famous television show Seinfeld. While the holiday is extremely popular among people today, the first time Festivus was mentioned in American culture was in the episode of Seinfeld called “The Strike”, but there’s more to the name of Festivus than just a referenced television episode, right? Indeed there is, because the word “festive” is derived from the Latin word “Festivus”. Sound familiar? It should. Festivus is an adjective meaning “excellent, jovial, and lively” which in turn derives from Festus, which means “joyous; holiday; feast day”. Plus, it brings one to think, maybe Festivus is to prove that we as humans don’t need material objects to be happy on a holiday, but all we really need is excellent company, jovial attitudes, and lively music to make the holidays the best we could have.


Read more here:

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Trip to Nicaragua

Next three days we are in Cristo Rey - where thousands of families live. We are starting our Lykki for Good 1:1 fruit give back program - supporting small fruit vendors and feeding children with the fruit we buy.
For every piece of fruit we sell at Lykki on a standing order we will donate a piece to the children of Cristo Rey.


Friday, December 16, 2016

How to deal with holiday stress

Here are some tips on handling the stressful holiday season!
Holiday stress got you down? Here is everything you know to stride through the season with calm.

Read more here:


Thursday, December 15, 2016

Acts of Kindness Advent Calendar, Day 15!

For today, your Act of Kindness is to buy someone a treat. Thoughtful surprises make everyone feel special, so treat someone you care about to a nice hot cup of joe or their favourite snack and it’ll definitely make their day that much sweeter. Want to spread the joy even further? Pick up a box of donuts to share with all of your coworkers or classmates.
Read more:

Not just something to view on Christmas Eve - lots to do and look at as of right now!
Check out here:



A Guide to Staying Stress-Free for the Holidays


Holiday stress got you down? Here's everything you need to know to stride through the season with calm. Read more here at Happify.com.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Gingerbread House Competition 2016!



Our finalists!


Sydney's House


Sheena's House


Sarah's House


Rita's House

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

The Science Behind Why Giving is Good for You

Sure, giving a gift feels good. But research shows that giving feels even better. Here's why...
Learn more here at Happify.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Packing hampers for the SHARE Food Bank

Over 1000 Christmas hampers completed at the Share Food Bank again this year. Wish we could make more.  Great turn out so we completed in record time.
Happy Holidays,  Everyone!







Saturday, November 19, 2016

Christmas Hampers

Time again for Christmas Hampers and helping out Share Services and Tri-City Food Bank. The goal is 1000 hampers this year!




Monday, October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween!

Costumes:





A Pumpkin Carving Contest:



 




And Pizza!


Thursday, October 20, 2016

15 Keys To Workplace Happiness

We spend a huge portion of our lives at work. Even if you only work the traditional 40 hours in a week, you’re still spending nearly 1/3 of your life at work. This can be a scary fact for some to face.
But if, with the right conditions, you derive a sense of joy from your work, feel a sense of connection, and believe that you create a positive impact on some portion of the world (however small) through your work then work becomes much more than just a paycheck.

Because so much of your life is spent at work, a huge deciding factor in your well-being is whether or not you’re happy at work. This can manifest in a number of ways, but the basic ingredients are the same in all types of work. Here are 15 keys to workplace happiness:

1. Freedom


The last thing you want is to show up to work with people looking over your shoulder telling you to, “change this,” or “do this another way.”
If you’re asked to design a portion of the company’s new website, and if you’re given creative freedom and the company lets you do your thing, then you’ll derive a great sense of confidence and joy from your work, feeling like you’re really making a difference.
Freedom is a fundamental ingredient in workplace happiness not only because you’re an adult and would rather not feel like you’re back in the classroom with a teacher hanging over your shoulder, but also because you want to feel that you’re trusted to do the job you’re asked to do and that the company believes you can create work to the quality standard it demands.
Being given the freedom to do the job you know you can do without being questioned every step of the way gives us confidence in our ability and makes us feel better about ourselves. Freedom is key in every aspect of life, and work is no exception.

2. Positive relationships

Every day you show up to work, you interact with people. These connections are unavoidable, and so it goes without saying that the quality of these connections has a significant impact on our workplace happiness.
In a survey done by Virgin Pulse, it was found that nearly 40 percent of respondents identified their co-workers as the top reason they loved their company.
In addition to that, 66 percent said these relationships positively impacted their focus and productivity at work and 55 percent said these relationships positively impacted stress levels on the job.
If you enjoy your co-workers, especially if you work with friends, you’ll truly enjoy coming into work each day and the time you spend at work will be joyful and rewarding.
Continued: www.lifehack.org/articles/work/15-keys-workplace-happiness.html

Monday, October 10, 2016

6 Ways to Foster More Happiness in the Workplace

Happy employees are more productive, more creative and less likely to leave. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to create a fun environment at your workplace. If you embody your ideal corporate culture and integrate joy and laughter into your daily routine, your employees will follow.
It’s wise to do everything you can to prevent dissatisfaction among your employees. A large turnover rate can quickly erode your hard work and deplete your resources. Once a staff member starts to look for other career options, he's already got one foot out the door.
As you grow your business, invest a little time to make your company a great place to work. Pay attention to the personality traits of your current staff, hire new employees carefully and foster an environment of joy, hard work and professionalism. The following tips will help you create a corporate culture full of fun.
1. Lead by example. Your employees will follow your lead when it comes to corporate culture and behavior. If your only interactions with your team are serious and formal, your employees will feel the need to be professional at all times. Be open about your past mistakes and learning moments. Add a little self-deprecating humor when it’s appropriate to help your employees view you as human and approachable. When staff members feel joyful, they’re more motivated and produce better work.
2. Don’t confuse seriousness and solemnity. Laughter is often a way for people to deal with intensely stressful situations. If your company is in the middle of a crisis and an employee cracks a joke, don’t assume they’re not taking the situation seriously. Humor can be a great catalyst for creative ideas and problem solving. The more your staff members are worried about how to correctly behave, the less they’ll be focused on finding a solution.

Continuation: www.entrepreneur.com/article/232922

Monday, October 3, 2016

The Surprising Truth About Workplace Happiness

Most bosses understand (if only in theory) that happy employees are more productive than miserable ones. However, it turns out that many of the things that make employees happier don't make them more productive.

For example, companies often try to make their employees happier by trying to make the workplace more fun, like by having an onsite video game parlor and or an in-house gym. Other companies host community-building exercises to build a greater sense of connection.
Unfortunately, while these approaches may make employees happier, they probably don't increase employee productivity and may end up having the opposite effect. Let me explain.
Over the past three years, Harvard University researcher Matthew A. Killingsworth has been compiling data from users of a smartphone app called Track Your Happiness, which lets people report, in real time, how they actually feel.
The most surprising result of this study is that we're most often the happiest when we're lost in what we're doing, aka being "in the zone." Conversely, we become less happy when our minds wander.
Surprisingly, it doesn't really matter what we're doing when we're "in the zone," as long as we're not being distracted or in a situation where we're bored.
In other words, employees aren't more productive when they're happy. They're happy when they're focused, which can make them more productive as an accidental byproduct.
Therefore, an onsite video game parlor (for instance) can increase employee happiness because video games are mentally absorbing, but that happiness isn't going to translate into more productivity.
On the contrary, if the work itself doesn't allow the employee to focus and get "in the zone," the activity will suffer by comparison to the "fun" part of the workplace.
Rather than trying to make employees happy by adding a sugarcoat of "fun" to a bitter pill of work, companies should make it easier for employees to become absorbed in their work, thereby making them more productive and happier at the same time.
With this in mind, there are four obvious strategies:
1. Don't give people too much work.  When people are overloaded to the point where they know they can't get everything done, they immediately focus on how much work they've got to do, rather than on actually doing it.
2. Don't give people too little work.  When people don't have enough to do, their minds wander and, with time on their hands, start finding other things to focus on, like workplace gossip or, yes, playing video games.
3. Remove distractions from the workplace. Provide private or doubled-up offices rather than bullpens or cubicle farms. Reduce the overall noise level. Set aside time during the day where corporate email is disabled.
4. Institute work/life balance policies. Flexible work hours, remote working policies, and generous paid sick leave allow employees to handle the distractions of their personal lives on their own time, so that they can focus on work when they're actually working.

Friday, September 23, 2016

3 Uncommon Ways To Drive Happiness In The Workplace

"Countless studies have found that social relationships are the best guarantee of heightened well-being and lowered stress," Achor told me, "and both are an antidote for depression and a prescription for high performance."
While it’s all too common in business for bosses to spot a few employees chatting it up in the halls and instinctively conclude that they’re dodging work, the research proves that the better people feel about workplace relationships, the more effective they become.
When surveying employee engagement all over the world, Gallup routinely asks workers, "Do you have a supervisor or someone at work who cares about you?" While many CEOs have asked Gallup to remove this question with the belief that it’s inherently soft and un-useful, Gallup discovered that people who answered "yes" to it were more productive, contributed more to profits, and were significantly more likely to remain with the firm.
During the early days of the financial meltdown, financial services firm, UBS, elected to eliminate the beer carts that circulated on the market floor every Friday afternoon. Achor told me that there was one manager who noticed an immediate and negative impact on his team’s spirits tied to this one cost-cutting move—and he decided to dip into his pocket to bring it back. As the economic crisis wore on, his team proved to be tighter, stronger, and less inclined to leave for a higher paying job. "I’m a professional investor," the manager said, "and this was the best investment I ever made."
Said Achor, "that simple act of paying for refreshments showed that he cared about his team’s level of happiness—not just their level of performance. And we now know those two things are directly linked."

Yale Psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski interviewed hundreds of workers in all professions and found that people have one of three work "orientations" or mindsets:
  1. They see work as being a "job," or a chore, and use the paycheck as its reward.
  2. They approach work as a "career" and work to advance and succeed.
  3. They see their work as a "calling" and find work fulfilling because it gives them feelings of meaning and purpose.
Wrzesniewski shows that people with a calling will work harder and longer simply because their jobs are rewarding. Consequently, Achor’s advice to hiring managers is to ask people, "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" Their answer will reveal how much of their heart they’ll likely bring to their work.

University of North Carolina psychologist, Barbara Frederickson, took a team of researchers into 60 companies and transcribed every word used in their business meetings. Afterwards, they parsed every sentence for positive and negative words, and took a simple ratio of the positive-to-negative statements.
What they discovered was that the companies with the greatest financial performance had a better than 3:1 ratio for positive communication. They additionally found that a ratio of 6:1 was characteristic of teams with consistently extraordinary achievement.
Achor’s advice: "Go out of your way to build employee strengths instead of routinely correcting weaknesses. When you dip below the Losada line, performance quickly suffers."
The idea that it’s become the job of organizations to foster employee happiness is unquestionably one that still rankles many in business. Many of us can’t get beyond the traditional belief that happy workers produce unhappy shareholders.
But Achor offers this advice to the slow-to-adapt and openly skeptical: "We’re hitting a tipping point where we realize we can no longer increase the number of hours and stress loads that we’re putting on people to raise their level of productivity.
"What we’re finding is that if you want to see what people are capable of achieving, it requires new types of leadership—and new definitions of how we pursue happiness in organizations."

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

The Importance of Happiness in the Workplace

Many people feel that if they become successful at work, they will automatically become happy. But according to Shawn Achor, founder and CEO of Good Think, Inc., that scenario should be reversed. It’s important to become happy, which will then help you become a success. Achor makes it his business to study the psychology of happiness in the workplace. He consults with organizations worldwide and regularly publishes his findings on his website (www.shawnachor .com). His ground-breaking book, The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, was published in 2010.
Continuation: www.leadertoleaderjournal.com/sample-articles/the-importance-of-happiness-in-the-workplace.aspx

Monday, September 19, 2016

An Unexpected Way to Stop People from Quitting


Great idea! At Lykki we have a fun on boarding process where all new partners get a chance to try different departments, but hits is a whole new "level up".


At my company, year after year we score high in our employee satisfaction surveys. Yet, despite these results, we still see a sizeable chunk of annual staff turnover.

This has always bothered me. If people love the company, why are they leaving?
In part, it’s simply a sign of the times. Millennials change jobs more frequently: an average of once every 2.5 years during the first decade out of college. That’s double the rate of their Gen X predecessors.
But I wanted to better understand the actual reasons why this happens. So over the past year, we spoke to a range of employees in an effort to find out. In doing so, I realized it wasn’t about compensation (or, at least, just about compensation). Nor was it problems with bosses or coworkers. Many people were leaving because they wanted to try something new. They wanted to be challenged with a different role and different set of responsibilities.
We were losing A players, in other words, because they were bored. Personal development is far more than just a buzzword to Millennials. In fact, 65% of Millennials say that personal development is the most important factor on the job, according to a UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School study. And this doesn’t mean just levelling up an existing skill set. It means being able to explore and internalize different skills entirely: to learn something new.
I can relate. As a career entrepreneur, I know the allure of moving from one venture to another, gaining new knowledge with each pivot. But that same dynamic doesn’t always work within a company, where people are hired for discrete roles and expected to excel within clear boundaries. If one of our developers decides he or she is bored with coding and wants to pursue a love of blogging for a living instead, for example, that person probably needs to find a new place to work.
Continuation: www.linkedin.com/pulse/unexpected-way-stop-people-from-quitting-ryan-holmes