How Do Scientists Think About Happiness at Work?

 Causes of happiness in people

• much of it is deemed to be inherited (50%) - study of twins 

what seems to work?

One...  study (Seligman et al. 2005) tested five simple self-administered interventions and found that two of them effectively improved happiness six months later. 

• an online assessment of one’s ‘signature strengths’ together with instructions to use a character strength in a new way each day for a week
• writing down three good things that happened each day and attributing causes to each, for a week. 

Causes of happiness in organizations

Organizational level.

• Three key elements 
• trust the people you work for
• have pride in what you do
• enjoy the people you work with
• Trust in the employer, built on (is seen as the cornerstone (http://www.greatplacetowork.com)
• credibility
• respect
• fairness

Sirota et al. (2005) agree that three factors are critical in producing a happy and enthusiastic workforce: 

• equity (respectful and dignified treatment, fairness, security), 
• achievement (pride in the company, empowerment, feedback, job challenge)
• camaraderie with team mates.

High performance work practices, also known as high involvement and high commitment approaches, involve 

• redesigning work to be performed by autonomous teams 
• being highly selective in employment,
• offering job security
• investing in training,
• sharing information and power with employees
• adopting flat organization structures 
• rewarding based on organizational performance

Job level 

Leader behavior is related to employee happiness.

• Charismatic leadership is strongly related to subordinate job satisfaction (corrected population correlation = 0.77, DeGroot et al. 2000)
• leader/member exchange is also fairly strongly related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Gerstner and Day 1997) 
• trust in the leader is a strong predictor of satisfaction and commitment (Dirks and Ferrin 2002). 
• Autonomy support displayed by leaders also appears to be important for follower satisfaction, well-being, and engagement (Baard et al. 2004; Deci et al. 1989). A stream of research on abusive supervision by Tepper (2007)

Event level 

Good feelings were most often experienced in connection with events involving

• achievement 
• recognition
• interesting and challenging work
• responsibility
• advancement/ growth
• pleasant interactions with others 

Employees spend most of their work time performing or attempting to perform, so beliefs about how well they are doing it should be both salient and continuously available. 

• goal achievement and positive feedback predict satisfaction (Kluger and DeNisi 1996; Kluger et al. 1994; Locke et al. 1970).
• Control theory suggests that the rate of progress towards a goal is a determinant of positive affect (Carver and Scheier 1990). 
• Fisher has argued that perceived performance is a strong determinant of concurrent mood and emotion at work, especially for individuals who care about their job and who have adopted approach goals (Fisher 2008). 
• In an experience sampling study, Fisher found an average within-person correlation between self-rated performance at a moment in time and concurrent task satisfaction of 0.57 (Fisher and Noble 2004). 

Research on Happiness at Work

Measuring the content of happiness at work

• A pair of innovative studies based on self-determination theory showed that individuals have happier than usual days compared with their own baselines when they experience greater satisfaction of basic needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness in major activities during the day (Reis et al. 2000; Sheldon et al. 1996). 
• In achievement settings, individuals report more intrinsic motivation and positive emotions when they hold mastery or performance-approach goals for an activity than when they have performance-avoid goals (Pekrun et al. 2006; Rawsthorne and Elliot 1999). Another short-lived situational influence on happiness is the happiness of others with whom one interacts, through the mechanism of emotional contagion (Hatfield et al. 1994).

Increasing happiness at work

Individual actions 

• relatively little research on how individuals may volitionally contribute to their own happiness at work
• much of the advice on how to improve happiness in general likely applies
• practice gratitude
• pursue intrinsic goals
• nurture relationships
• find flow
• more authentically happy if one feels a ‘calling’ or a connection between what they do at work and a higher purpose or important value (Seligman 2002; Wrzesniewski et al. 1997)
• job crafting’ by employees
• defined as 
• modifying the tasks to be performed
• building or changing relationships with co-workers or clients
• psychologically reframing the meaning of work
• craft your job to 
• assert control
• create a positive self-image at work 
• fulfill basic needs for connection to others
• improve demands–abilities fit is provided by the strengths based view. 
• identify your unique configuration of personal or character strengths, talents, and preferences
• cultivate these personal strengths 
• design your job or career to allow you to cultivate these strengths
• spend much of each day applying them
• minimize demands to use other skills that do not use strengths 

Organizational actions to increase happiness at work

• create a healthy, respectful and supportive organizational culture. 
• supply competent leadership at all levels. 
• provide fair treatment, security and recognition. 
• Design jobs to be interesting, challenging, autonomous, and rich in feedback. 
• Facilitate skill development to improve competence and allow growth. 
• Select for person–organization and person–job fit. 
• Enhance fit through the use of realistic job previews and socialization practices. 
• Reduce minor hassles and increase daily uplifts. 
• Persuade employees to reframe a current less than-ideal work environment as acceptable (mentioned but decidedly not endorsed by Hackman 2009). 
• Adopt high performance work practices

Consequences of Happiness in Organizations

• Be careful 
• While the most common effect of momentary happiness on work behavior appears to be positive, it has been argued that moods and emotions can harm concurrent work performance. 
• Beal et al. (2005) suggest that all emotions, positive or negative, have the potential to reduce task performance by redirecting scarce attentional resources away from the task and towards the source of the affect.