PERMA at work: what HR can do in 30 days.

You have run the surveys. Now what?

If you work in HR, you have probably run at least one satisfaction survey. The results were “fine, but…”, the board nodded – and went back to the budget. People learned the lesson you did not want them to learn: when you answer a survey, nothing happens. PERMA at work is a way to make the next round different – with small things that are visible, measurable and in thirty days show the board something more than a chart.

PERMA is a model by the psychologist Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology (the book Flourish, 2011). It says that human well-being stands on five legs. When one wobbles, the chair still holds. When three wobble, you are sitting on the floor.

The five letters of PERMA at work, in plain language

• P – positive emotions. Not “be positive”, but: is there at least one moment in the week when someone here laughs for real?
• E – engagement. What Csikszentmihalyi calls flow: work that pulls you in so far you forget the clock. How many such hours do your people get a week – or do meetings chop them into twenty-minute pieces?
• R – relationships. Does everyone have at least one person in the company they would tell “I messed up” before it becomes a problem?
• M – meaning. Does the accountant who knows everything, and the sales rep who “has his own clients”, know whose life their work changed for the better?
• A – accomplishment. Do people see what they have finished? Or only the list of what is not done yet?

None of this is “soft”. Gallup’s engagement data has shown the same thing for years: teams where people are engaged have lower turnover, less sick leave and better results. PERMA just tells you where to look.

Why surveys alone move nothing

A survey is a thermometer, not a cure. And a thermometer you read once a year and put back in the drawer teaches people one thing: that honesty is a cost with no return. Next time they answer “all 4s”, because that is the least work.

That is why the plan below runs in the opposite order from the usual one. We don’t measure and then think for six months. We measure briefly, do something small and visible right away, and measure again in thirty days. Then people see the link: I said something – something moved.

The 30-day plan, week by week

Week 1 – a short measurement and one owner

Five questions, one per letter, on a scale of 0 to 10. For example: “How often at work do you feel completely absorbed in what you are doing?” You can take the questions from the PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016), which is free for non-commercial use. The survey takes two minutes, not twenty. Alongside it, name one owner of this experiment – not “HR”, but a person with a name and a date.

Show the results to the team within seven days. All of them – including the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

Week 2 – relationships and positive emotions

Two small habits that cost nothing. First: on Mondays, in the first five minutes of the meeting, everyone names one concrete thing that went well last week – with a name and a moment, not “everything’s fine”. Second: once a week, four minutes of conversation with the colleague you talk to least. Research by Epley and Schroeder shows that people underestimate how much they enjoy such a conversation. Every time.

Week 3 – engagement and accomplishment

Every team gets one ninety-minute block a week with no meetings, no messages and no “got a minute?”. That is space for flow. Alongside it – a “Done” board: a wall or a channel where every finished thing is written down. People are used to seeing only what is late. This gives them back the sense that something is moving.

Week 4 – meaning and the second measurement

At the weekly meeting one person tells a concrete story: whose life did our work make easier this month? A customer, a patient, a colleague from another department. Two minutes, no slides. At the end of the week – the same five-question measurement. Compare. Then decide which habit stays and which goes.

What not to do

• Don’t buy a fruit basket as a strategy. Fruit is nice. But if people don’t get an hour of quiet a day, an apple won’t fix that.
• Don’t start with all five letters at once. Pick the two where the results are weakest. A small shift that is visible is worth more than a big plan that never happens.
• Don’t measure without feedback. If you don’t show the results, the second survey will get fewer answers than the first.
• Don’t leave this to HR alone. If the managing director doesn’t talk about the results in the meeting, people conclude it is an “HR project” – and behave accordingly.

What it looks like when it works

Pro.Med. is a company we ran the “Make It Better” team day with. We did not measure whether the day was fun, but whether the agreements from that day hold: after 30 and 90 days every agreement gets a status. The logic is the same as in this plan: small, visible, with an owner, measured before and after.

When companies ask us “so why you, then?”, the answer is simple. You can do this plan yourselves. We are worth it when something has to move that a survey cannot bring out – what people stay silent about in the office and say in half a sentence by the fire on the Una.

In short: PERMA at work in four weeks

1. Measure briefly: five questions, two minutes. Name an owner.
2. Show the results within seven days – including the bad ones.
3. Two free habits for relationships and positive emotions.
4. Ninety minutes without meetings and a “Done” board.
5. A story about meaning at the meeting, then the second measurement and a decision.

If you like the plan but don’t know where to start in your company – let’s talk for half an hour.