Psychology of Workplace Happiness
Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, defined happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile.”
Happiness is the subject of one of the fastest-growing areas of academic research. This also extends to workplace experiences. Happiness in the workplace refers to how satisfied people are with their work and lives. It is crucial for improving productivity in any organization.
Surveys from the American management consulting company Gallup found that only 13% of employees are actively engaged at work. This means that in the US alone, a cost of up to US$550 billion in lost productivity annually. A 700-person study by economists at the University of Warwick where three different styles of the experiment were conducted on randomly selected individuals, who were made happier by various interventions, found that happy employees were 20% above the control group in terms of productivity. The same study found unhappy workers were 10% less productive than the control.
Increasing Employee happiness
Employees can gain happiness through a better environment and culture. This has can be explained further using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory given by Abraham Maslow. It proposed that an individual is motivated as a result of an attempt at fulfilling a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.
Maslow’s hierarchy can be easily used to show the correlation between what needs are to be satisfied at an organizational level for an employee to grow. When a workplace is designed and managed to create meaning for its workers they tend to be healthier and happy.
An example of this is Google, which introduced a program they call “innovation time off” or 20% time, where they give the employees the opportunity to not “work” for eight hours of their week to complete side projects that drive creative and innovative ideas for the company. This resulted in the creations of Gmail, Google Earth, and Google Talk.
Strategies for Increasing Happiness
Draw in with happy individuals: In a study for University of California in 2008, researchers found that surrounding yourself with happy individuals increases the possibilities of your future happiness.
Cultivate significant relationships: It has been found that who you work with matters. According to the Harvard Business Review, “close work friendships boost employee satisfaction by 50%.” Moreover, “people with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to engage fully in their work.”
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that happiness increases efficiency in the workplace and leads to better, more productive outcomes.
