Happiness at Work

During the quarantine I took upon myself to leverage the time at home to do some courses in different subjects, some to support work development and some others for personal interests that I was looking forward to do for a while but never had the time. As you may know, this can be a chain reaction. Once you are doing one online course, several more appears as suggestions and, if you let, you end up with a list of several interesting courses that would take almost a lifetime to complete. So, reviewing what was suggested and trying to make wise selections, one course sparked my curiosity. It was the Foundations of Happiness at Work from University of California Berkeley.

Although it may seem obvious the happier the people the better on a personal level, I thought it was interesting to bring the concept of happiness to the work scenario. Often, we think about job satisfaction but that is not necessarily happiness. So, I decided to give it a try.  

Throughout this learning experience I have been exposed to several studies on this field that proved the benefits of investing in creating a friendly work environment that is focused on the well-being, on the happiness of the employee. Some of benefits that these studies presented are:

• People that are happy at work are more productive and more creative. Making workers happier have increased 12% of productivity according to a study published in the Journal of Labor economics in 2015.
• Happy at work employees are more resilient, face new challenges better, and are more prone to find ideal solutions that make the best use of resources at hand, according to Barry Schwartz, expert in work motivation and decision making
• Happier organizations are move innovative. Two articles published in the Journal of Corporate Finance in 2016 reported that employee friendly organizations tend to invest more in innovation.
• According to a Gallup report, increasing employee’s happiness can reduce turnover costs by 52%.

The course divides the research in 2 categories: what a person can do to improve happiness at work and what an organization can do. But first, what that would mean?

According the s Greater Good Science Center of UC Berkeley, the concept of happiness at work “involves a sense of enjoyment, felling intrinsically driven to make progress towards goals and knowing that what we do matters”

In order to achieve this state, Dr. Dacher Keltner, one of the researchers responsible for the course, introduced the system PERK: Purpose, Engagement, Resilience and Kindness. This system helps the employee and the organizations to develop a work environment where happiness is one of the outcomes.

In the middle of several suggestions for both categories and while I am still going through this wonderful training, I want to highlight some very interest ones and that I took upon myself to either improve or start doing.

1. We feel more purposeful at work when our everyday behaviors and decisions are aligned with our core values. So actively, from time to time, reflect on your personal values at work and pursue opportunities and projects that are more aligned with them.
2. To increase your engagement, pursue autonomy. i.e., having more ownership of your day to day schedule, tasks, professional development and built in more opportunities to learn and grow.
3. Make sure you have activities at work that make you feel good - According to research published in the The Psychologist-Manager Journal in 2000 “positive emotions at work make people more creative and friendly, better at problem solving, and more resilient to workplace challenges”. So, while it may feel unproductive to spend time on enjoyable activities rather than jumping right on your to-do list, the boost of happiness provides you the energy and capacity to be more productive and engaged the rest of the day.
4. Celebrate your progress, no matter how small they are – For that you can do a “3 good things daily journal”. In this method you take 10-15 minutes of your day to write down 3 positive things that happened at work that day, from compliments you received, or part of a task you were able to finish to new connections and so on. Celebrate them.

Happiness is not a state of perpetual cheerfulness, tireless climb toward status or even less a result of perfection. Pursuing happiness at work is pursuing positive well-being combined with a sense that “life is good” and that what you do at your job matters.

[A conscious business] has a deeper purpose beyond only making profits. Just like individual people by following their hearts can discover their own sense of deeper purpose, so can the business enterprise. -John Mackey, Chief Executive Officer, Whole Foods