Happiness at Work? Lord Price Nails It - The Secret Is Lean People, Not Lean Workers
When Lord Mark Price says “To raise productivity, make people feel happy at work” I nod hard. Because over twenty years in Lean consulting, I’ve seen how the mechanics of efficiency, of process mapping, of removing waste, all of that matters. But what often gets overlooked is who does the work, and how they feel doing it. To me, lean isn’t about having lean workers, it’s about developing lean people/individuals, and when individuals are developed in this way, lean workers naturally follow.
In this post, I’ll explore Price’s arguments, align them with lean philosophy (including TIMPWOOD waste), bring in examples, and show how focusing on the person, not just the process, creates workplaces that are both productive and humane.
What Mark Price Says: Key Themes
Drawing from recent articles and his work through WorkL, Lord Price emphasises a few recurring truths.
Happiness at work correlates strongly with productivity, staff retention, lower sickness absence and lower turnover. When people feel good, they show up, they stay, they engage.
There are measurable drivers of happiness: reward & recognition; sharing information; empowerment; wellbeing (physical, emotional, financial); pride; job satisfaction. These often emerge in his “six steps” framework.
The UK’s productivity problem is tied, in part, to how unhappy many people are at work. Price argues you cannot only fix infrastructure, minimum wage, or regulation; you need to fix how people feel at work.
Hybrid working helps, many agree that people tend to be happier when they have some flexibility. Full mandate to return to office 5 days a week tends to hurt both happiness and productivity.
So, for Price: happiness isn’t “nice to have”. It is a foundational lever of productivity.
Lean Thinking & Happiness: Where They Meet
Lean was born in process improvement, eliminate waste, standardise, reduce variation, respond to customer needs. But one of its subtlest truths is that waste isn’t just machines breaking down or delays in production. Waste is also social, psychological, emotional. If we apply the Lean waste acronym TIMPWOOD (Transport, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Processing, Over-production, Over-processing, Defects) to people, many “wastes” emerge when happiness is neglected. Here’s what I mean:
Transport: Not just physical movement, also emotional “transport”, the psychological burden of being out of the loop, feeling your ideas aren’t heard, having to re-explain yourself because information doesn’t flow.
Inventory: Idle mental capacity. When people are unhappy, disengaged, part of their capability lies unused (or worse, they spend energy resisting or checking-out).
Motion: Unnecessary meetings, bureaucracy, micromanagement, all of which move people around, or require energy that doesn’t add value, and reduces autonomy.
People: When happiness is neglected, people themselves become a “waste stream.” Think of the untapped creativity when someone feels ignored, the duplicated effort when people aren’t aligned, or the conflict and miscommunication that arise when wellbeing isn’t cared for. A disengaged or unhappy person often has to redo work, needs extra supervision, or withdraws their best energy. Lean thrives when people are thriving, because people are the system.
Waiting: Waiting for decisions, waiting for feedback, waiting for recognition, waiting to be heard. All produce frustration and reduce forward momentum.
Over-production: Doing more than needed because people are anxious, try to over-deliver to compensate for lack of trust, or produce reports nobody reads.
Over-processing: Overengineering roles, tasks, performance metrics, controls, approvals. When happiness is low, organisations often add layers to try to compensate; these layers themselves create waste.
Defects: In the human system sense, mistakes due to fatigue, misunderstandings, low engagement; also defects in morale, culture, retention.
If we want lean systems, we must also make lean individuals: people who are engaged, empowered, clear, and well-treated. That means treating the “soft stuff” (culture, recognition, meaning) with the same seriousness that we do maps, metrics, and process flows.
“Lean Workers” vs “Lean Individuals”
Here’s a small but important language distinction that I think changes what you build:
“Lean workers” suggests moulding people to fit lean processes, expecting lean behaviour, optimisation, etc. It risks seeing people as cogs in an efficient machine.
“Lean individuals” suggests developing people, building skills, mindsets, autonomy, responsibility, capacity to see value in what they do, ability to contribute to continuous improvement.
When you develop lean individuals, you get:
people who notice waste themselves, not just when someone else points it out;
people who care about the process because they see the effect on themselves, their colleagues, and the output;
more resilience when things go wrong, because individuals are more adaptive;
systems that don’t get brittle, because people are trusted, heard, and invested in.
So, “Don’t try to have lean workers, develop lean individuals, and you WILL get lean workers.”
A Turning Point: Why I Left Industry
I’ll be honest: part of the reason I left industry to create Being Lean and now Leanier is because I became frustrated. I love Lean, I still do, but I saw the same patterns repeating again and again in organisations:
Teams would get excited about Lean, but then staff turnover meant I had to start from scratch, re-explaining principles, rebuilding momentum.
Lean culture rarely survived the lifespan of a single project. Once leadership changed, or a project closed, the improvement work dissolved.
Too many people associated Lean with being imposed, something done to them, not with them. It became a compliance exercise instead of a way of life.
And when people did try to apply Lean outside work, they often cherry-picked tools or activities - 5S here, a value stream map there -without embracing the fundamentals.
That cycle wore me down. Because Lean is too important, too transformative, to be reduced to a toolkit or a tick-box exercise. So, I made a decision: rather than fighting the same battles inside organisations, I would take Lean into the everyday. Into the lives, homes, kitchens, routines of people. Into places where culture can actually stick, because it’s personal.
And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Helping people see Lean not as a corporate initiative but as a lens for life, a way to live better, happier, lighter, more intentional.
How to Put This into Practice: Concrete, Different-Angle Examples
Let me give you some concrete, maybe slightly outside-the-box ways (not the usual Lean workshop, 5S board, VSM) to develop lean individuals via workplace happiness.
“Recognition micro-rituals” instead of annual awards Instead of waiting for end-of-year reviews, build daily or weekly rituals for recognising small acts: someone clearing away redundant processes, someone helping another colleague, someone speaking up about safety or efficiency. Not glamourous, but constant gratitude reduces the Waiting waste and boosts Pride.
Peer “Lean Coaches” from within teams Pick people not because they are “managers” but because they want to see process improvement, perhaps those who are emotionally connected. Train them in lean tools, but also in empathy, listening, recognition. They check in with peers, asking: “What feels like waste in your day?” and “What would make your work smoother / more satisfying?”
“Job crafting” embedded in regular routines Give people space (e.g. half-day per month, or project time) to adjust what they do: shift tasks, change how they work, combine parts of work they find meaningful, drop or reassign parts that feel wasteful or demotivating. Encourage them to test these changes, reflect, adapt.
Transparent metrics plus human stories Use productivity metrics, but always pair them with human stories / qualitative feedback. For example: “We improved flow time by X%” together with “this is how Joanna in Customer Support feels now that she has fewer unnecessary escalations.” That keeps people engaged and connected to meaning.
Design feedback cycles for “emotional latency” Often, problems brew because dissatisfaction is not surfaced early. Use “pulse surveys” or “happiness check-ins” that are short, frequent (weekly or biweekly), anonymous or safe, asking questions like: “What’s one thing that’s bothering you in your work this week?” or “What small change would make your next week better?” Then act on one thing per team per cycle.
Empowerment via small experiments Let people run small experiments to test improvements. For example: changing layout, reordering tasks, changing meeting formats. Give autonomy, let them see what works, let failure be low risk. This builds ownership, reduces waste (Waiting, Motion, Over-processing), and raises satisfaction.
Cross-role shadowing and rotation Allow people occasionally to see other roles in the organisation, or rotate through tasks. This builds empathy, exposes people to how their work affects others (reduces defects, misunderstandings), and helps them see where they might reduce waste, or propose improvements.
Wellbeing in all its forms Not just physical health programmes, but emotional, psychological, financial wellbeing. Help people with financial literacy, flexible working, mental health support, clear paths for growth. When people are worried about things outside work (or feel trapped in low pay or dead-end roles), their ability to be lean (in focus, in purpose, in energy) is degraded.
Why Focusing on “Lean Individuals” Helps Sustain Lean
Lean initiatives often fail or plateau. Why? Because the system depends too much on process change, tools, leadership edicts, not enough on the people who execute those processes. We end up with:
Lean initiatives that are seen as top-down burdens rather than shared improvements.
Lean tools that get implemented superficially, but without cultural embedding.
Lean routines that result in burnout or frustration if the human cost is neglected.
By developing lean individuals, people who have autonomy, are emotionally invested, feel valued, and are continuously learning, you get:
improvements from all levels, not just management;
ideas and waste elimination that come from the front line;
more adaptability when conditions change (supply chain disruption, remote work, etc.);
sustainability of lean culture, not just KPIs.
How This Aligns with Lord Price & What He Might Add If He Thought in Lean Terms
If Lord Price were thinking explicitly through a lean lens (not just wellbeing / happiness lens), I believe he would say:
Much of what he calls “happiness drivers” are enablers of waste elimination. Empowerment reduces waiting; information sharing reduces defects; pride reduces over-production (doing more to compensate); job satisfaction means people spot over-processing.
Measuring employee sentiment isn’t soft. It’s data. It gives you insight into where waste is hiding, in staff turnover, in late feedback, in sick absence. As Lean teaches, you cannot improve what you don’t measure.
The idea of dual responsibility, that both organisation and individual have roles, mirrors the lean attitude: people at all levels own a piece of process improvement, not just managers.
What To Say to Skeptics (Because There Will Be Many)
“Happiness is fluffy / soft / not measurable” - No. WorkL has data across many organisations, many sectors and countries. Happiness metrics correlate with retention, turnover, productivity. If you care about output, you must care about what shapes productivity, and how people show up or not.
“We can’t afford all the perks” - It’s not about free lunches; it’s about respect, recognition, clarity. Those are low cost. Many improvements are behaviour, culture, communication, not big investment.
“Lean is already about metrics, process, we don’t need this additional stuff” - Lean works best when people are engaged. Tools without people who care, who understand, who are psychologically safe, often fail. The continuous improvement mindset needs psychological safety, trust, ownership.
My Personal Take: Stories from My Lean Journey
On the road doing lean work in construction and beyond, I repeatedly saw that the projects with greatest success weren’t the ones with the best process maps, but the ones where:
the team felt respected, heard, encouraged, rather than judged;
small wins were celebrated (we improved lead-time by a few hours; someone suggested a layout change);
people were given permission to experiment, to say “this is broken” even if they were low in the hierarchy;
issues outside immediate process (like lack of rest, chaotic scheduling, external stressors) were addressed.
In many projects, we get repeated delays not just from material supply, but because labour crews were demotivated: long drives, poor food, no flexibility, lousy communications. Lean tools tried to address the symptom, tighter scheduling, but until we addressed the root (crew wellbeing, shift patterns, rest) the delays persisted. Once we changed things performance will always improve, morale raised, delays & disruptions dropped.
People are not just inputs, they’re systems of resilience, learning, energy. This shapes how I now coach lean adoption. From the start, I ask: What wastes are in these individuals’ way making them unhappy & frustrated? What strengths are untapped? What wastes are emotional, relational, informational?
What I Think Needs to Happen Next
For organisations serious about embedding both happiness & lean thinking, here are steps I believe are essential:
Start with measurement (but make it meaningful). Baseline where people are at emotionally, psychologically, in satisfaction. Use both quantitative (surveys) & qualitative (conversations).
Build capability in soft skills for leaders & managers: listening, coaching, giving feedback, empathy. These are not “nice extras”; they’re core lean enablers.
Make happiness part of the lean metrics you track: turnover, absenteeism, rework & errors from miscommunication, discretionary effort, sentiment.
Use short feedback loops for improvements. Try changes, gather feedback, iterate (just like in process improvement).
Empower people deeply, in lean, people on the floor are often best placed to identify waste. Give them the tools & safe space & authority to act.
Align reward systems not just to output but to continuous improvement, collaboration, culture. If people are only rewarded for hitting targets without regard to how they treat others or how sustainably they worked, then culture will suffer.
Conclusion
I believe that to get lean workers, you must first develop lean individuals. Lord Price is absolutely right: productivity rises when people are happy, respected, empowered, well-treated. But to me, that isn’t just a nice add-on. It is the foundational soil from which lean culture can grow in a sustainable, humane way.
Lean isn’t only about trimming; it’s also about nurturing. Nurture people, develop mindsets of autonomy, respect, continuous learning, team pride, and you will find they naturally reduce waste, spot inefficiencies, solve problems, and love their work more.
Let’s shift perspectives: from “How can I force my workers to be lean?” to “How can I become or help create lean individuals?” Because that shift is not incremental, it’s transformative.
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