The Costs of an Unhappy Workplace
Being happy at work has a host of benefits not only for the worker but also for their employer. Research has shown that “happier employees are healthier, have lower rates of absenteeism, are highly motivated to succeed, are more creative, have better relationships with peers, and are less likely to leave a company,” Paul B. Lester et al write in the MIT Sloan Management Review. “All of these correlates of happiness significantly influence a company’s bottom line.”
Firm leaders, then, have a financial as well as moral interest in the happiness of their employees. But what gives people that sense of well-being? Different people have different “happiness set-points” based on heredity, while other factors like financial security and health also have an impact. A variance in happiness of 40 percent can be attributed to “our daily intentional activity, what we do and how we think,” professor of Management Golnaz Sadri reports.
“While happiness is influenced by heritability and drivers like finding a sense of meaning, a larger portion of the happiness pie may result from factors like workplace flexibility, reasonable pay, type of work, and managers who are supportive. That means it’s possible for leaders to shape the workplace to make happier employees,” Lester et al suggest. Inequality creates unhappiness, and with female architects earning 77 percent of what their male colleagues earn—an imbalance found in many professions—there’s a lot of unhappiness in the workforce. Ensuring pay equity and actively seeking to eliminate gender bias in hiring and promotion are two ways to increase equality and thereby happiness in the workplace.
Library of Congress Copyright Office, c. 1920.
Using the happiness of their workforce as a metric for evaluating firm leaders could motivate leaders to make positive changes, Lester et al suggest. One tool firms can use to measure the happiness of their employees is the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). A free online PANAS questionnaire is offered by the University of Pennsylvania; a PDF PANAS questionnaire is available from the University of Ohio.
Once an organization learns about the relative happiness of its workforce, it can take measures to increase it. But what can an individual do to increase their own happiness? That can be trickier. “[T]he more value people placed on happiness, the less happy they became,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant writes, referencing research by psychologist Iris Mauss.
In fact, one study found participants who actively sought happiness felt more lonely. Grant writes, “[I]f you truly want to experience joy or meaning, you need to shift your attention away from joy or meaning, and toward projects and relationships that bring joy and meaning as byproducts.”
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