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Being happy at work is important. Studies suggest that if you’re not happy at work, you’re less productive, more likely to take days off sick, and a poor problem solver. Still, some people maintain being happy at work isn’t important—that happiness is just one possible by-product of a good working environment, and not worth being goal in and it itself. I think, however, this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what happiness can mean. In order to discuss whether it’s worth being happy at work—or anywhere else—we should first understand what sort of happiness we are talking about.
When most people hear the word “happy," research shows that they think of words associated with pleasure, such as joy, contentment, excitement, or fun. Yet there’s another interpretation of happiness, and this refers to whether or not your life is going well in the broader sense. To get at whether or not your life is going well, I think we need to look beyond just pleasure. In Happiness by Design, I argue that we also need to understand how meaningful your experiences are—so whether they also feel worthwhile, fulfilling or purposeful. Happy lives will contain a balance of both pleasurable and purposeful experiences. Most people, for example, find watching TV to be pleasurable but not very purposeful, whereas they find working more purposeful than pleasurable.
It is important to emphasise here that I am not talking here about an overall evaluation of whether or not you are happy at work. Take the story I often tell of my friend, who worked for a prestigious media company. When we went out for dinner, she spent the entire evening describing how miserable she was at work; she variously moaned about her boss, her colleagues, and her commute. At the end of dinner, and without a hint of irony, she said, “Of course, I love working at MediaLand.” There is actually no real contradiction here: she is experiencing her work in one way and evaluating it in another way. I contend that it’s your experiences that matter most to your happiness at work and in life—and my friend seemingly agrees with me, as she has now started looking for another job.
Because your experiences at work can feel purposeful as well as pleasurable, being happy at work could mean that you’re not having any fun at all. You could be completely at happy at work if you instead found what you were doing to be completely worthwhile. A happy working environment doesn’t mean that your work colleagues are your friends and you’re always out for lunch and dinner together. Quite the contrary, as you might find yourself having more purpose than pleasure whilst out dining with them, and this could cut into the pleasure you might need to feel in order to balance the purpose you experience at work. Instead, your job should at least feel purposeful, if it is not pleasurable.
We are learning more all the time about what brings people purpose at work. One of the most well established means of experiencing purpose is to get feedback on how well you are doing. Employees who receive feedback report higher experiences of meaning on the job. In one well-known study, participants built Lego models and were paid around $2 for each assembled model. Half of the participants were randomly selected to have their work displayed in front of them: each assembled model was lined up on their desk. For another half of participants, their work was disassembled before they started on the next build. Unsurprisingly, those whose work was disassembled worked less hard—they built three models less on average than those whose work was displayed in front of them. Similar findings have been shown for charitable donations—we’re happiest when we know exactly how they’ll help rather than generally what charity we are donating to.
So it doesn’t have to be hard to be happy at work. Design environments where you can see your progress and the benefit of your work. This will benefit you and your boss, too.
