Happiness at work is the best antidote to stress. Stress doesn’t necessarily come from working too much but from feeling bad while you work.
People who are happy at work tend to enjoy life more and have better health, stronger relationships and a greater sense of purpose. They also have a huge positive impact on the organisations they work for – evidence shows that happier staff are more productive, creative and committed.
Happiness at work has traditionally been seen as a potential by-product of positive outcomes at work, rather than a pathway to business success.
Ryan and Deci offer a definition for happiness in two views: happiness as being hedonic accompanied with enjoyable feelings and desirable judgments and they define happiness as being eudemonic, which involves doing virtuous, moral and meaningful things.
Companies with higher than average employee happiness exhibit better financial performance and customer satisfaction. Thus, it is beneficial for companies to create and maintain positive work environments and leadership that will contribute to the happiness of their employees.
Antecedents
Organisational culture:
Organisational culture represents the internal work environment created for operating an organisation. It can also represent how employees are treated by their bosses and peers. Therefore, an effective organisation should have a culture that takes into account employee’s happiness and encourages employee satisfaction
Jarow concludes that employee feels satisfied not through comparisons with other peers, but through his/her own happiness and awareness of being in harmony with their colleagues. He uses a term called “carrier” to represent lack of happiness, life in constant tension and never-ending struggle for status.
Employee salary:
There are many reasons that can contribute to happiness at work. However, when individuals are asked with regards to why they work, money is one of the most common answers as it provides people with sustenance, security and privilege. To a large extent, people work to live, and the pecuniary aspect of the work is what sustains the living.
The income-happiness relationship in life can also be applied in organisational psychology. Some studies have found positively significant relationships between salary level and job satisfaction.
Some have suggested that income and happiness at work are positively correlated, and the relationship is stronger for individuals with extrinsic value orientations. As opposed to the positive relationship between pay level and job satisfaction, some concluded that salary, in itself, is not a very strong factor in job satisfaction.
Job security:
Job security is an important factor to determine whether employee feel happiness at work. Different types of jobs have different levels of job security.
In some situations, a position is expected to be offered for a long time, whereas in other jobs an employee may be forced to resign his/ her job. Hence, this aspect is refer to determine the likelihood of losing one’s job.
The expectation of the job availability has been related with the job-related well-being and the high level of job security corresponds to high level of job satisfaction alongside a high level of well-being.
Career development:
The opportunity for promote or give a position that obviously capitalises on personal skills in one’s career is an important characteristic in occupational environment.
In essence, the progression of career is grown from bottom up in an employment hierarchy. However, there are also other forms of career development, involving indirect work movement, shifts to another roles.
The option for moving or shifting to alternative roles motivates the employee’s participation in the workplace meaning if employee can see the future potential for a promotion, motivation levels will increase. By contrast, if an organisation does not provide any potential for higher status position in the future, the employee’s effectiveness in work will decrease. In addition, the employee may consider whether or not the position would be offer to them in the future.
Work/life balance:
Work- life balance is a state of equilibrium, characterised by a high level of satisfaction, functionality, and effectiveness while successfully performing several tasks simultaneously. The non-work activity is not limited to family life only but also to various occupations and activities of which one’s life is composed.
Work/ life balance policies are created by many businesses and are largely implemented and dealt by line managers and supervisors, rather than at the organizational level as the employee’s well being can be more carefully observed and monitored.
Working relationship:
Co-workers are an important social group and relationships with them can be a source of pleasure.
Three Need theory also suggests that people have a Need for affiliation. Person-job fit, the matching between personal abilities and job demand, has important effects on job satisfaction.
Group relationship:
Group relationship is important and has effects on employees’ absenteeism and turnover rate. Cohesive groups increase job satisfactions. Among the target groups, group with high cohesiveness tend to have low absenteeism rate while group with low cohesiveness tend to have higher absenteeism rate.
Different communication ways in groups contribute to different employees satisfaction. For example, the chain structure results in low satisfaction while the circle structure results in high satisfaction.
Leadership:
In relations to the work place, successful leadership will structure and develop relationships amongst employees and consequently, employees will empower each other.
Good leadership can empower employees to work better towards reaching the organisation’s goals. For example, if a leader is considerate, the employees will tend to develop a positive attitude towards management and thus, work more effectively.
Consequences
Job performance: Research shows that employees who are happiest at work are considered to be the most efficient and display the highest levels of performance.
Absence from work: Employee behaviour might influenced by happiness or unhappiness. People would like to participate in the work when they feel happiness, or in the converse, absenteeism might occur.
Employee turnover: Employee turnover can be considered as another result derived from employee happiness. In particular, it is more likely that individual employees are able to deal with stress and passive feelings when they are in good mood.
Important reasons why happiness at work is the productivity booster:
- Happy people work better with others
- Happy people are more creative
- Happy people have more energy
- Happy people worry less about making mistakes – and consequently make fewer mistakes
- Happy people make better decisions
- Happy people have the right attitude
- Happy people are good and fast learners
- Happiness never let people fall ill
- Happy employees are better at handling adversity
- Happy employees provide better service
Inspiring Quotes About Loving Your Work
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. – Steve Jobs
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. – Benjamin Desraeli
Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures. – Jackson Brown Jr.
The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy. – Ben Stein
Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life. – Confucious
The secret is keeping busy and loving what you do. – Lionel Hampton
Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy. If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined. – Johnny Carson
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. – Pearl S. Buck
