the research we've ignored about happiness at work

Brought to you by:

The Research We've Ignored About Happiness at Work

By: André Spicer, Carl Cederström

It doesn't always make you more productive.

Length: 1819 word count
Publication Date: Jul 21, 2015
Discipline: Organizational Behavior
Product #: H027TW-PDF-ENG

What's included:

Educator Copy

$4.50 per student

degree granting course

$7.95 per student

non-degree granting course

Get access to this material, plus much more with a free Educator Account:

Access to world-famous HBS cases
Up to 60% off materials for your students
Resources for teaching online
Tips and reviews from other Educators

Already registered? Sign in

Student Registration
Non-Academic Registration
Included Materials

Jul 21, 2015

Discipline:

Organizational Behavior

Harvard Business Review Digital Article

H027TW-PDF-ENG

1819 word count

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, including personalizing content. Learn More . By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

3 Secrets to Happiness at Work According to Research

After all, the benefits are obvious. Happy workers enjoy what they do and work harder and smarter. Companies take fun, play, and satisfaction in the workplace seriously because they recognize the importance of happiness for productivity, staff retention, and employee wellbeing (McKee, 2014).

This article explores happiness at work in light of psychological research findings, sharing what we know of the concept, its advantages, and its implications for work-life balance.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Happiness & Subjective Wellbeing Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients identify sources of authentic happiness and strategies to boost wellbeing.

This Article Contains:

How to define work happiness, what research reveals about happiness at work, advantages of happiness in the workplace, happy work & life balance, how to be happy at work, even if you hate it, 6 work happiness ted talks, finding happiness at work quotes, best resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

Happiness, as a concept, is so slippery that, despite advanced tools for measuring emotions and predicting behavior, we still need to figure out precisely what it is, suggests Shawn Achor, the author of The Happiness Advantage (Achor, 2011).

As a result, it is sometimes easier to speak about happiness indirectly in relation to other mental phenomena, such as joy, engagement, and motivation. Indeed, according to Achor, happiness refers to the experience of positive emotions combined with much deeper feelings, including purpose and meaning (Achor, 2011, 2014).

Similarly, Martin Seligman–often referred to as the father of positive psychology –linked happiness to the following three components in his original authentic happiness theory (Seligman, 2011, 2011a):

Positive emotions Pleasure, warmth, comfort, and even rapture, as examples, create a “pleasant life,” as Seligman calls it (Seligman, 2011, p. 11).
Engagement Also known as flow, involves merging with the activity and losing one’s sense of self.
Meaning A “meaningful life” consists of belonging to, or serving, something more significant than the self (Seligman, 2011, p. 12).

When Seligman first wrote about the authentic happiness theory, he thought the goal of positive psychology was to pursue such happiness. However, his subsequent wellbeing theory evolved his approach, suggesting the “goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing” (Seligman, 2011, p. 13).

As such, while positive emotions, engagement, and meaning are essential, they are best combined with positive relationships and achievement. Together, they form part of Seligman’s far-reaching PERMA model and offer a path to a deeper level of flourishing and more profound happiness (Seligman, 2011).

In her book Positivity, Barbara Fredrickson also recognizes the problem of definition. She suggests the term ‘happiness’ is both murky and overused and better described in terms of feelings such as love, gratitude, and joy. Indeed, according to Fredrickson, happiness should, more usefully, be wrapped up in the concept of ‘positivity,’ where, as part of her broaden and build theory , each positive emotion supports and leads to others (Fredrickson, 2010).

While conceptually, happiness is tricky to define–in the workplace at least–in practical terms, it is intimately connected with staff motivation, deeper self-knowledge, spirituality, and finding meaning in tasks (Awada, 2019).

As a result, Achor rejects the traditional view that working harder leads to success and, ultimately, happiness—both in work and outside. Instead, happiness is relative to who we are and how we feel about our jobs and lives (Achor, 2011).

1. Happiness in the workplace is essential

Research suggests that it improves sales, productivity, and accuracy while boosting health and quality of life. Despite a clear link between employee happiness and business outcomes, it needs to be taken more seriously (Achor, 2011).

2. Positive psychology

When Achor introduced positive psychology principles into KPMG, one of the big accounting companies, following the 2008 banking crisis, they saw an increase in life satisfaction, work optimism, perceived effectiveness in work, and a reduction in perceived stress. Moreover, the effect was not short-lived. Four months later, improvements to personal and professional happiness were maintained (Achor, 2014).

3. Job crafting

However, while research typically finds a positive link between happiness and productivity in the workplace, chasing it may leave us feeling less happy and even frustrated.

the research we've ignored about happiness at work

Download 3 Free Happiness Exercises (PDF)

These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients with tools to discover authentic happiness and cultivate subjective well-being.

Download 3 Free Happiness Tools Pack (PDF)

By filling out your name and email address below.

Email Address *
Your Expertise * Your expertise Therapy Coaching Education Counseling Business Healthcare Other
Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Happiness at work matters because happy workers are more engaged with their jobs and colleagues and work harder and smarter. In fact, a happy employee is good for everyone: their psychological and physical wellness is boosted, they interact better with customers, and they are more productive for their employer (McKee, 2014).

Research confirms the many advantages associated with happiness in the workplace, including (Rahmi, 2018; Thompson & Bruk-Lee, 2021):

Productivity
Customer satisfaction
Flexibility
Financial losses
Worker stress

Ultimately, healthy and happy employees are more productive, produce the best goods, and offer customers more satisfying services (Rahmi, 2018).

Increasingly, research recognizes that workplace happiness can “significantly mediate the relationship between job demands and organizational outcomes” (Thompson & Bruk-Lee, 2021, p. 1419).

In her book, The Burnout Fix , she points out that while we should all be making time for silence and sanctuary, support, and connection, the time required for each varies. We are all unique, and so are our needs (Jiménez, 2021).

We vary in our circumstances, abilities, life experiences, work cultures, stressors, and what a successful sustainable life looks like. Work-life balance is whatever feels balanced to the individual (Jiménez, 2021).

Our article Work-Life Balance in Psychology: 12 Examples and Theories considers the multiple roles each of us plays: partner, parent, manager, team member, and teacher. Each one has unique needs and challenges and the potential to upset our life balance (Kalliath & Brough, 2008).

As a result, changes to any of the following can create an imbalance that brings unique demands (Guest, 2002):

The work environment
In individual attitudes

Greater awareness of our many roles can help us anticipate how changes impact our lives and happiness.

In What Are Life Domains & How Can We Balance Them? we look at how we attempt to juggle each of the following five life domains (Vanderweele, 2017):

Spirituality

Sometimes it is necessary to say ‘No’ to new or changing demands. Other times, we must accept and acknowledge that we cannot do everything—we have limits. Furthermore, increasing focus on positive life domains and reducing attention on negative ones is a powerful strategy that creates a better life balance and improved wellbeing (Lee & Sirgy, 2018).

Job crafting is the process of personalizing work to better align with one’s strengths, values, and interests. (Tims & Bakker, 2010). Any job, at any level can be ‘crafted,’ and a well-crafted job offers more autonomy, deeper engagement and improved overall wellbeing.

As you can see, the benefits of job crafting are seemingly endless.

The PositivePsychology.com Job Crafting Coaching Manual outlines a seven-session framework to help you or your clients navigate the ins and outs of crafting a job to align with their values, strengths, and interests.

Research suggests that work happiness and life satisfaction are in the hands of the individual and the organization.

Firstly, it’s essential to recognize that happiness is an advantage at work, and rather than waiting for future successes, we can find it in the present. Secondly, by creating good habits that increase life satisfaction, you can train your brain and prepare it for higher levels of happiness (Achor, 2014).

Psychology recognizes that no matter whether you like or loathe your workplace, you can change the lens through which your brain views and assesses the world.

This can be done by

showing gratitude,
practicing kindness and compassion,
engaging in mindfulness, and
taking part in regular exercise.

In turn, we can learn to build positive emotions that impact our workplace happiness and overall life satisfaction (Achor, 2011, 2014; Seligman, 2011).

Research by Annie McKee and her team at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education found that to be genuinely engaged and happy, employees need (McKee, 2014):

A meaningful vision of the future When our personal vision is aligned with our organization’s vision, we feel engaged and part of its future.
A sense of purpose We need to feel part of something that matters. Working towards meaningful goals can both excite and engage us.
Great relationships The connections we form–or don’t–with our colleagues and boss are vital. When we experience them as close, trusting, and supportive, we are more willing to contribute to the team.

While team-building and fun days are valuable, profound, enduring engagement and satisfaction require a consistent environment where people can flourish (Seligman, 2011; McKee, 2014).

Research continues to highlight the benefits of positive psychology and the closely related concept of happiness in the workplace, including (Fredrickson, 2010; Donaldson et al., 2019; Ryan & Deci, 2018):

Setting and working toward goals Goals are powerful tools for motivating individuals and teams and increasing overall happiness.
Boosting positive emotions Creating a culture of gratitude, joy, optimism, hope, and other positive emotions can positively influence happiness.
Increasing intrinsic motivation Targeting intrinsic triggers and satisfying needs such as relatedness (or connection), autonomy (or control), and competence (or mastery) can have significant positive effects on happiness and wellbeing.
Awareness and use of strengths Knowing our strengths and finding or creating opportunities to use them improves performance and mental wellness.

There are plenty of TED Talks that can guide organizations and their employees in creating an environment, culture, and mindset more conducive to happiness:

1. The happy secret to better work

Shawn Achor’s talk is fast-moving and funny, taking the audience on a journey that inspires increased happiness and improved productivity in the workplace.

2. Grit: The power of passion and perseverance

Watched over 28 million times, Angela Lee Duckworth recognizes and explores the importance of grit to success and a happier life.

3. What makes us feel good about work?

Money is not what ultimately makes us happy at work. Instead, we need purpose, progress, and growth, explains Dan Ariely in this illuminating talk.

4. The new era of positive psychology

Martin Seligman, one of the most important people in positive psychology, talks us through its ability to help us flourish and improve positive emotions.

5. How to make work-life balance work

For many, achieving the ideal work-life balance can seem an almost impossible goal. In this talk, Nigel Marsh says that this task is too important to be left to the employer, and it is up to us to find the best balance between family, personal, and productive time.

6. Why having fun is the secret to a healthier life

We spend much of our lives at work, yet it often isn’t associated with having fun. Catherine Prices discusses the importance of “true fun” and how to weave playfulness into our day.

The following quotes offer inspiration as our clients identify and build happiness in their workplace through living their values, finding purpose, and creating lasting connections (Robinson, 2022; Work quotes, n.d.):

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi

“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” – Alan Watts

“Goal setting is the most important aspect of all improvement and personal development plans. It is the key to all fulfillment and achievement.” – Paul J. Meyer

“Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction.” – Anne Frank

“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” – Buddha

“Work without love is slavery.” – Mother Teresa

“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.” – Simon Sinek

“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.” – John Dewey

“Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value and behaving in a way that’s consistent with those beliefs.” – Mike Rowe

“Work hard, be yourself, and have fun!” – Michelle Kwan

17 Exercises To Increase Happiness and Wellbeing

Add these 17 Happiness & Subjective Well-Being Exercises [PDF] to your toolkit and help others experience greater purpose, meaning, and positive emotions.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

We have many resources available for coaches working with their clients to build a realistic and enduring work-life balance and the resilience to reduce workplace stress and experience more positive emotions.

Our free resources include:

Your Best Work Self This helpful tool supports professionals in identifying what fuels their passion and building the environment, relationships, and tasks that encourage happiness in the workplace.
Strengthening Ikigai in the Workplace A helpful worksheet for understanding what your clients enjoy doing, are good at, and can get paid for at work. The aim is to optimize performance, boost intrinsic motivation, and encourage a happier time in their chosen career.
Workplace Mindfulness Mindfulness positively impacts happiness across multiple life domains. This worksheet uses a set of simple questions that clients can ask themselves to help improve workplace satisfaction.

Another extremely useful resource:

Balancing Life Domains© is a coaching masterclass that will teach you how to help others effectively manage attention and energy between our most valued life domains, such as family, work, and leisure. This is taught by addressing the roles of attention, need fulfillment, and actions required to create life balance. Your clients will be given all the necessary tools to create a more balanced life through fun and engaging exercises and techniques.

Balancing Life Domains© Masterclass is exclusive to Life Navigation© , our comprehensive positive psychology certification program. As such, it can only be accessed through joining Life Navigation© and can not be purchased as a stand-alone masterclass.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others develop strategies to boost their wellbeing, this collection contains 17 validated happiness and wellbeing exercises . Use them to help others pursue authentic happiness and work toward a life filled with purpose and meaning.

Happiness in the workplace is a serious business. It can have a dramatic effect on employee and organizational performance and boost wellbeing.

And yet, the concept of happiness, even for psychologists, remains unclear. However, whether easily defined or not, happiness in the workplace is intimately connected with other members of staff, our work, and our environment—it is not something experienced in isolation.

The effects of happiness at work are far-reaching: satisfied staff are less absent and more accurate, creative, and productive. And crucially, they are better able to handle stress, reducing absenteeism and improving mental wellbeing.

Beyond that, a happy workforce can successfully mediate the often challenging relationships between job demands and organizational outcomes.

Finding a successful work-life balance that works for us is crucial. There is no one-size-fits-all. We are all unique, and so are our circumstances. As a result, there will be times when we have to say ‘no’ to new opportunities and others when we may need to re-prioritize according to our evolving needs.

Why not try out some of the above tools and others we have available with your clients? A positive environment and helpful habits can create a more balanced lifestyle and improve our happiness inside and outside the workplace.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Happiness Exercises for free .

Achor, S. (2011). The happiness advantage . Random House.
Achor, S. (2014). The happiness dividend . Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2011/06/the-happiness-dividend
Awada, N. (2019). Happiness in the Workplace. International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering , 8(9S3), 1496-1500.
Donaldson, S. I., Lee, J. Y., & Donaldson, S. I. (2019). The Effectiveness of Positive Psychology Interventions in the Workplace: A Theory-Driven Evaluation Approach . In: Van Zyl, L., Rothmann Sr., S. (Eds) Theoretical Approaches to Multicultural Positive Psychological Interventions. Springer
Fredrickson, B. (2010). Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to release your inner optimist and thrive . Richmond: Oneworld.
Guest, D. E. (2002). Perspectives on the study of work-life balance. Social Science Information , 41(2), 255–279.
Jiménez, J. M. (2021). The burnout fix overcome overwhelm, beat busy, and sustain success in the New World of Work . New York: McGraw Hill.
Kalliath, T., & Brough, P. (2008). Work-life balance: A review of the meaning of the balance construct. Journal of Management & Organization , 14(3), 323–327.
Lee, D. J., & Sirgy, M. J. (2018). What do people do to achieve work-life balance? A formative conceptualization to help develop a metric for large-scale quality of life surveys. Social Indicators Research , 138(3), 1–21.
McKee, A. (2014). Being happy at work matters . Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2014/11/being-happy-at-work-matters
Rahmi, F. (2018). Happiness at workplace. Proceedings of the International Conference of Mental Health, Neuroscience, and Cyber-psychology – Icometh-NCP , 2018.
Robinson, A. (2022). 71 best job satisfaction quotes for employees in 2022 . Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://teambuilding.com/blog/job-satisfaction-quotes
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2018). Self-determination theory: basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness . New York: The Guilford Press.
Spicer, A. & Cederström, C. (2015). The research we’ve ignored about happiness at work . Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2015/07/the-research-weve-ignored-about-happiness-at-work
Seligman, M. (2011). Flourish: A new understanding of happiness and well-being and how to achieve them . London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Seligman, M. (2011a). Authentic happiness . North Sydney, N.S.W.: Random House Australia.
Tan, C. (2014). Search inside yourself: The unexpected path to achieving success, happiness (and world peace) . New York: HarperOne.
Thompson, A., & Bruk-Lee, V. (2021). Employee happiness: Why we should care. Applied Research in Quality of Life , 16(4), 1419-1437.
Tims, M., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). Job crafting: Towards a new model of individual job redesign. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 36(2) , 1-9.
Vanderweele, T. J. (2017). On the promotion of human flourishing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 114(31), 8148–8156.
Work quotes (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/work

Share this article:

Article feedback

What our readers think.

This is a great article. I believe all of us are always trying to do our best each day at work. Employees in a positive mood are more productive than those who are not. Employees who feel confident about their abilities and are able to focus on their tasks are more likely to be productive. These employees will be less likely to become distracted by negative thoughts or feelings about the workplace or about themselves. This will enable them to focus on achieving the goals set out by their bosses or supervisors without being distracted by negative thoughts regarding these goals or about themselves. One way I think will effectively help employees to be more productive is by giving them a room where they can concentrate and focus on their tasks, for example, an office which can be used whether for group meetings or just simple phone calls.

Wow! This is really a very engaging, inspiring & helpful article. Now, i realized this is what is gone & missing in our workplace. I really wish & hope to be an instrument to help my colleagues happy at work. How can I share this article to my manager?

Hi Josephine,

Glad you liked this post. While we don’t currently have an option to download our posts, you are very welcome to share them with others. If you scroll to the end of the post and respond positively to the question ‘How useful was this article to you?’ several sharing options will become available to you.

Hope this helps!

– Nicole | Community Manager

Excellent article on Happiness at work. Thanks for sharing. We are in the process of designing a program on Employee happiness at our organisation . Look forward to using some of the information and references given here for the same. Thank you so much.

This is one the great article that guides people to be happier at work irrespective of what is happening in their lives. If you are happier at work you will be more productive and will show optimum growth in the coming time.

Nice Blog!!! Thank you for sharing the information. Wonderful blog & good post. It’s really helpful for me. Happiness the most important for live healthy and long life. The Happiness Shot is the most preferred source of happy news, good news and positive news from around the world to spread hope, inspiration, and optimism.

Hi Dennis, So glad you took something meaningful from this post. All the best living your own happy life! – Nicole | Community Manager

Great information . Could I reshare this article on my website obviously with all your credentials and approval? Please do let me know. Best May a

Hi Maya, Of course! Please feel free to link to us on your website. 🙂 – Nicole | Community Manager

Just checking on the subject and found it. It is great.Will be sharing the ideas with collesgues.

A wonderful piece on happiness! Thanks for sharing. Wish you happiness always! This article is very helpful to teach about how to create happy workplace to my students. Thank you!

Let us know your thoughts Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Embracing JOMO: Finding Joy in Missing Out

We’ve probably all heard of FOMO, or ‘the fear of missing out’. FOMO is the currency of social media platforms, eager to encourage us to [...]

The True Meaning of Hedonism: A Philosophical Perspective

“If it feels good, do it, you only live once”. Hedonists are always up for a good time and believe the pursuit of pleasure and [...]

Happiness Economics: Can Money Buy Happiness?

Do you ever daydream about winning the lottery? After all, it only costs a small amount, a slight risk, with the possibility of a substantial [...]

Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

3 Happiness Exercises Pack [PDF]

SUGGESTED TOPICS
The Magazine
Newsletters
Managing Yourself
Managing Teams
Work-life Balance
The Big Idea
Data & Visuals
Reading Lists
Case Selections
HBR Learning
Topic Feeds
Account Settings
Email Preferences

Why You Should Stop Trying to Be Happy at Work

Susan Peppercorn

Find meaning in your job instead.

What are we really searching for when we say we want more “meaning” at work, and how does it differ from happiness? Philosophers, scholars, artists, and social psychologists have struggled to come up with an answer to that question for years. According to research by psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues, five factors differentiate meaning and happiness. The author describes them and then offers practical advice on ways to find more meaning in your work.

So much is written about happiness at work — yet judging from Gallup statistics that show 85% of employees aren’t engaged, few know how to attain it. Given that the average person spends 90,000 hours at work in a lifetime, it’s important to figure out how to feel better about the time you spend earning a living. Here’s the catch, though: If you set happiness as your primary goal, you can end up feeling the opposite. This is because happiness (like all emotions) is a fleeting state, not a permanent one. An alternative solution is to make meaning your vocational goal.

Susan Peppercorn is an executive career transition coach and speaker. She is the author of Ditch Your Inner Critic at Work: Evidence-Based Strategies to Thrive in Your Career. Numerous publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, the Boston Globe, and SELF Magazine have tapped her for career advice. You can download her free Career Fit Self-Assessment and 25 Steps to a Successful Career Transition .

Partner Center

The research about being happy at work that you should ignore

Don't beat yourself up if you’re NOT skipping into the office or busting to get to your work from home set up. Some studies found that happy employees CAN have a negative effect on productivity. An article in the Harvard Business Review laid out the evidence – and it’s a mixed bag! We want you to reframe your thinking the next time you’re having a sh*t day at work.

Read ‘ The Research We’ve Ignored About Happiness at Work ’ from the Harvard Business Review
Follow @thespace_podcast on Instagram
Watch @thespace_podcast on TikTok
Follow @novapodcastsofficial on Instagram

CREDITS Host: Casey Donovan @caseydonovan88 Writer : Amy Molloy @amymolloy Executive Producer : Anna Henvest Editor : Adrian Walton

Listen to more great podcasts at novapodcasts.com.au

In 1 playlist(s)

2,259 clip(s)

Social links

Follow podcast.

Apple Podcasts

Happiness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Book description

Achieving happiness while excelling at your career.

What is the nature of human happiness, and how do we achieve it in the course of our professional lives? And is it even worth pursuing?

This book explores answers to these questions with research into how happiness is measured, frameworks for personal behaviors, management techniques that build happiness in the workplace—and warnings that highlight where the happiness hype has been overblown.

This volume includes the work of:

Daniel Gilbert
Annie McKee
Gretchen Spreitzer

This collection of articles includes “Happiness Isn’t the Absence of Negative Feelings” by Jennifer Moss; “Being Happy at Work Matters” by Annie McKee; “The Science Behind the Smile” an interview with Daniel Gilbert by Gardiner Morse; “The Power of Small Wins” by Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer; “Creating Sustainable Performance” by Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath; “The Research We’ve Ignored About Happiness at Work” by André Spice and Carl Cedarström; and “The Happiness Backlash” by Alison Beard.

How to be human at work. The HBR Emotional Intelligence Series features smart, essential reading on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review . Each book in the series offers proven research showing how our emotions impact our work lives, practical advice for managing difficult people and situations, and inspiring essays on what it means to tend to our emotional well-being at work. Uplifting and practical, these books describe the social skills that are critical for ambitious professionals to master.

Series Page
1. Happiness Isn’t the Absence of Negative Feelings
2. Being Happy at Work Matters
3. The Science Behind the Smile
4. The Power of Small Wins
5. Creating Sustainable Performance
6. The Research We’ve Ignored About Happiness at Work
7. The Happiness Backlash

Product information

Title: Happiness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)
Author(s): Harvard Business Review, Daniel Gilbert, Annie McKee, Gretchen Spreitzer, Teresa Amabile
Release date: April 2017
Publisher(s): Harvard Business Review Press
ISBN: 9781633693227

Purpose, meaning, and passion (hbr emotional intelligence series).

by Harvard Business Review, Morten T. Hansen, Teresa M. Amabile, Scott A. Snook, Nick Craig

Find your purpose at work. In an ideal world, our work lives would be completely fulfilling …

Mindful Listening (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

by Harvard Business Review, Jack Zenger, Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, Peter Bregman

Become a mindful listener at work. Listening is a critical skill that leaders and managers often …

Mindfulness (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

by Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman, Ellen Langer, Susan David, Christina Congleton

Bring mindfulness into your work. The benefits of mindfulness include better performance, heightened creativity, deeper self-awareness, …

Confidence (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

by Harvard Business Review, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Amy Jen Su, Peter Bregman

Become more confident at work. You need confidence to inspire trust, communicate effectively, and succeed in …

Don’t leave empty-handed

Get Mark Richards’s Software Architecture Patterns ebook to better understand how to design components—and how they should interact.

It’s yours, free.

Check it out now on O’Reilly

Dive in for free with a 10-day trial of the O’Reilly learning platform—then explore all the other resources our members count on to build skills and solve problems every day.

The Future Leadership Institute

Bridging university and industry | inquirere et immutare = to study and reform.

YOUR FLI: The Future Leadership Institute (FLI) was designed as a grassroots movement bringing together students and professionals exploring leadership themes. Join a local FLI at your university or business school. Or better, create a local FLI if there is not yet a local FLI at your uni or school.

What does FLI do? Find an example here: “American Election Seminar” at Politico with Executive Editor Matthew Kaminski

Book your tickets via info(at)fil.institute

What does FLI publish? Find an example here: Topography Research: Exploring Goma Region In Africa: Diary by Floris Buter

Floris Buter, Managing Director Commercial Enterprises, Virunga National Park. For diary, click the picture.

What does FLI publish? Find an example here: “Middle East Research: Columns Koert Debeuf”

For an overview of the columns of author Koert Debeuf click on the picture, or look for the category "Koert Debeuf Column"

Books for Brains

Leadership Articles

Follow blog via email.

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address:

Research On The Relationship Between Work And Happiness

Happiness is typically defined by how people experience and evaluate their lives as a whole. Since most of us spend a large proportion of our lives at work, it is inevitable that our experiences and feelings there have a strong influence on our levels of happiness.

In the most recent World Happiness Report — published annually to coincide with the United Nation’s International Day of Happiness — I worked with co-author George Ward (Institute for Work and Employment Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics) to contribute a chapter that delved more deeply into the relationship between work and happiness.

We draw largely upon the Gallup World Poll, which has been surveying people in over 150 countries around the world since 2006. This meant that we could analyse data from hundreds of thousands of individuals across the globe and investigate the ways in which different aspects of people’s working lives drive their wellbeing.

‘Subjective wellbeing’ – loosely referred to as happiness – is measured in two ways. First, we look at ‘life satisfaction’: how people think about the quality of their lives overall. This is measured by Gallup according to something known as the Cantril Ladder. Gallup asks respondents to imagine an 11-step ladder in which the top step is their best possible life and the bottom step is their worst possible life; they are then asked which step they think they’re currently on.

Life satisfaction alone does not constitute wellbeing though. Gallup also investigates the extent to which people experience positive and negative affective states such as enjoyment, stress, and worry in their day-to-day lives. And in our chapter on work and happiness, we analysed these responses in conjunction with traditional workplace measures such as job satisfaction and employee engagement.

Having a job is important

The overwhelming importance of having a job for happiness is evident throughout the analysis, and holds across all of the world’s regions. Overall, employed people evaluated the quality of their lives around 0.6 points higher on average than the unemployed on a scale from 0 to 10. And unemployed people reported that they experienced around 30 percent more negative emotions in their daily lives as well as fewer positive ones.

It’s not just about the money, although people with jobs rated their overall life satisfaction much more highly than people without jobs. As we explain later, it’s about social status, social relations, daily structure, and working towards goals.

But some jobs are happier than others

Certain broad types of jobs are associated with higher and lower levels of individual happiness, even taking into account variables such as income and education.

Blue-collar labour is systematically correlated with lower levels of happiness, and this is true of all labour-intensive industries such as construction, mining, manufacturing, transport, farming, fishing, and forestry.

Senior professionals (manager, executive, official), on the other hand, evaluate their lives higher and report more positive affective experiences. The self-reported happiness of office workers (clerical, sales, or service) is significantly lower than that of their senior colleagues, even controlling for income and other covariates.

Interestingly, we find that being self-employed is associated with higher overall life evaluation in most developed nations, but that self-employment is also associated with the heightened experience of negative emotions such as stress and worry.

What makes a good job?

As you might expect, people in well-paying jobs are happier and more satisfied with their lives and jobs than those in the lower income brackets. However, it is not the case that the more money you have the happier you are. Our findings suggest that there are diminishing returns to higher income: an extra $100 of salary is worth much more to someone at the lower end of the income distribution than someone already earning a larger amount.

Beyond income, work-life balance is perhaps the strongest workplace driver of an individual’s subjective wellbeing. This turns out to be true across the board, in terms of people’s life and job satisfaction, general happiness, and moment-to-moment emotional experiences.

Those who have a job that leaves them too tired to enjoy the non-work elements of their lives report levels of positive affect in their day-to-day lives that are substantially lower than those who do not. Furthermore, workers who report that their job interferes with their ability to spend time with their partner and family, as well as those who ‘bring their job home’ with them by worrying about work matters even when they are not at work, report systematically lower levels of subjective wellbeing across all four measures

The content of the job is important. Those with jobs that entail high levels of variety and the need to learn new things are more satisfied with their lives and their jobs and experience more positive emotions day-to-day. Further, individual autonomy in the workplace is a significant driver of happiness: having control over how the work day is organised as well as the pace at which the employee works is positively correlated with higher wellbeing outcomes. Conversely, those with jobs that involve risks to their health and safety generally score worse on the measures of subjective wellbeing captured in this survey.

Social capital in the workplace is even more important. The level of support that a worker receives from his or her fellow workers is very strongly predictive of all four measures of subjective wellbeing in the sample, as is being able to have a say in policy decisions made by the organisation for which the employee works.

Job security is also a robust driver of individual wellbeing. Those who feel their livelihood is at risk systematically report lower levels of subjective wellbeing than those who report having high levels of perceived job security. Connected to this is the notion of being able to ‘get on in life’: those who feel they have a job that has good opportunities for advancement and promotion – even controlling for their current level of remuneration and the current content of their job – feel more satisfied with their jobs and lives and also tend to experience more positive affective states.

Finally, bosses have been shown to be important. Recent work has demonstrated that bosses and supervisors can play a substantial role in determining subjective wellbeing. In particular, the competence of bosses has been shown to be a strong predictor of job satisfaction, even controlling for individual fixed effects in a longitudinal analysis that follows people who stay in the same job as their boss gains (or loses) competence over time.

Questions to ponder

Are stratospheric salaries the only way to retain top talent.

If your best people are already well paid, offering them ever-higher salaries is unlikely to make them correspondingly loyal. What is most important to them and what can you offer, beyond money, that will make them want to stay?

Is the gig economy really the path to happiness and productivity?

The growing trend towards using ‘self-employed’ or ‘freelance’ workers in low-level jobs such as couriers is often justified by arguing that self-employed workers have control over when they work and are thus able to achieve the work-life balance that they want.

While this may hold true for a minority of people in specific circumstances (such as students or predominantly stay-at-home parents seeking a supplementary income), employers should recognise that income and job security are also drivers of subjective wellbeing, as well as a sense of autonomy in the workplace.

What are the trade-offs between pay, security, and flexibility that can or should be made to ensure greater happiness on the part of workers, and thus greater productivity for the employers?

How can you restructure existing jobs and practices to create engagement?

Even where people reported general levels of job satisfaction, levels of engagement were very low across the world. In fact, paid work is ranked lower than any of the other 39 activities individuals can report engaging in, with the exception of being sick in bed.

The differences can be attributable to the fact that the concepts of job satisfaction and engagement are measuring different aspects of happiness at work. Satisfaction can perhaps be reduced to feeling content with one’s job; the notion of (active) employee engagement requires individuals to be positively absorbed by their work and fully committed to advancing the organisation’s interests. Understandably, this is what employers want – but it’s a much more difficult hurdle to clear.

Interestingly, the data shows clearly that business owners report being much more actively engaged at work as compared to all other job types. Does this suggest that the partnership model, or something that feels like partnership, could be the way forward?

Should there be other measures of manager competence?

If incompetent managers are indeed contributing to making people unhappy at work, how can they be identified and either improved or removed? Unfortunately, the standard means of measuring employee satisfaction – the staff survey – is more or less uniformly incapable of generating a clear picture of individual managers’ competence. Even though these surveys are presented as anonymous, few staff tend to risk completing them nearly as fully and frankly as they would like.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

Source: Saïd Business School, Dr De Neve is Associate Professor of Economics and Strategy at Saïd Business School and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College.

1 reply »

Pingback: The Secret to Meaningful Work, Wealth and Happiness In The 21st Century - US Government Jobs

Management vs Leadership

Disclaimer: between 2007 and 2011 the institute carried the name “the wall street journal future leadership institute”.

FLI logo 2007 - 2011

Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Subscribe Subscribed
Copy shortlink
Report this content
View post in Reader
Manage subscriptions
Collapse this bar