If you can’t fix it with a happy hour, it’s not a problem

There’s a pub on my street with a sidewalk chalkboard that reads:

There’s no problem a happy hour won’t fix.

Now that’s some good copywriting. Hope they get lots of customers.

Because they’re not completely wrong. Hanging out with friends at a bar and drinking our sorrows away has been one of humanity’s most effective coping mechanisms for thousands of years.

What’s kind of spooky, though, is when this idea applies to an organizational level.

This tactic gets touted in the startup world a lot. Magazines, experts, consultants and media brands encouraged company founders or human resources managers to throw corporate happy hours as touch points for building company culture.

Which, overall, as a positive thing. Happy hours foster employee bonding, create a venue for celebrating milestones, makes for a memorable outing, gives people time to unlatch from their daily grind and spend time together as people, not just professionals.

Plus, there’s free booze. What’s not to like?

The danger is when leaders treat happy hour as the panacea for all company culture challenges.

Or as some magic wand to check all the cool place to work boxes.

Morale is way down? Throw a happy hour.

Staff is totally burned out? Throw a happy hour.

Our best employees keep quitting to work for our biggest competitors? Throw a happy hour.

Not to be ungrateful for the company generously providing drinks and a space to hang after work. It’s a lovely gift and should continue to be given. The question leaders have to ask themselves is:

Are we using happy hour as an excuse to not confront our problems?

It’s funny, one of the reasons many people drink alcohol is just that. To avoid difficult situations and uncomfortable or complicated feelings. Why deal with our sadness and anger when we can do shots?

Organizations seem to be doing the same thing. They may as well station a sidewalk chalkboard in their lobby that reads, if you can’t fix it with a happy hour, then it’s not a real problem.

And believe me, this isn’t an indictment against alcohol. We’re all adults and have the right to consume whatever we want.

The underlying principle is what’s concerning. Leaders of organizations have a responsibility to treat the company’s problems, not just its symptoms.

Because if employees are not happy, then throwing a happy hour will only make them marginally happier, for that hour.

Monday morning, they’ll be back to where they started. Because the source of their unhappiness is rooted in something much deeper.

If leaders want to create an atmosphere worth coming to, then it’s not an issue of whether the glass is half full or half empty, but whether there should even be a glass in the first place. 

If your organization can’t find the solution, it is possible that you don’t understand the problem?