Most people would naturally choose happiness if given the choice between being happy or unhappy at work. While happiness can be a pleasant byproduct of job satisfaction, it does little to boost engagement or productivity in the workplace. It's an outcome, not a driver, of workplace satisfaction. Surprisingly, a Google search on "What does scientific research say about happiness in the workplace?" often leads to behavioral observations rather than rigorous scientific studies. Even when studies are listed, they don't usually focus on happiness. Scientific research by psychologists typically highlights correlations between productivity and factors like work-life balance, job satisfaction, and psychosocial safety – not happiness.
Happiness is a fundamental human emotion; there's nothing wrong with wanting people to feel happy at work. However, there are three critical issues to acknowledge. The first is the misconception of happiness drivers; happiness is often confused with the factors that create it in the workplace—engagement, decision-making autonomy, the perceived value of work, and psychosocial safety. The second issue is the misallocation of resources in the pursuit of happiness - organizations often invest time, money, and resources on initiatives that entertain rather than enhance work, potentially derailing productivity. The third issue is the subjectivity of happiness; happiness is highly individual, making it difficult to develop effective organization-wide strategies to achieve it.
The first issue with happiness is that it gets conflated with the actual drivers of workplace productivity, particularly psychosocial safety, which profoundly impacts people and productivity. The field of positive psychology generally agrees that happiness consists of three components: life satisfaction, the presence of a positive mood, and the absence of a negative mood. These are cumulative outcomes of one's conditions and experiences, including work. While happiness can contribute to better workplaces, businesses, and leaders must first focus on the factors that build or erode satisfaction and mood.
Abraham Maslow's research on the hierarchy of needs identified 'safety and security' as essential. While most workplaces in the developed world provide high physical safety, there is still significant work to be done around psychosocial safety. Frederick Herzberg's studies on work motivation have consistently shown that essential hygiene factors include 'relationship with the manager,' and the critical motivators are feelings of achievement, job satisfaction, and decision-making authority. These are critical to reducing psychosocial risk - minimizing anxiety, stimulation, conformity, and ambiguity.
The second issue is companies' investment in initiatives that entertain but may ultimately derail workplace satisfaction and productivity. Before investing in specific strategies, organizations must consider how they will enable people to think, feel, or act differently and whether the strategy will support higher engagement, advocacy, and productivity levels. They also need to consider if the strategy will create psychosocial states like focus, calm, clarity, and healthy debate, which help employees function and perform better. Ironically, strategies designed to create happiness, like a ping-pong table in the break room, may have a negative impact on psychosocial safety for some people as they can increase ambiguity (“How much am I allowed to play?”) and anxiety (“Why are other people playing and not working?”). Many leaders who implement these strategies have a high tolerance for anxiety and ambiguity, so they don’t even think of the unintended consequences.
The subjectivity of happiness is the final issue. Tests like the Subjective Well-Being (SWB) Scale, the Authentic Happiness Inventory, and the Subjective Happiness Scale are self-reporting and measure 'subjective happiness.' More scientific tests measure deeper psychosocial constructs such as optimism and pessimism. The inherent subjectivity of happiness makes it challenging, and even a bit daunting, to develop organization-wide strategies to achieve it, and its individualistic nature can drive leaders to make decisions that suit their own preferences, creating workplace strategies that suit their high tolerance for ambiguity, anxiety, and stimulation.
For example, leaders may enjoy a stimulating, unstructured environment, so they implement hot-desking to increase connection and collaboration. However, it’s likely some of their team may find it overstimulating and distracting, others may struggle with the ambiguity of not having assigned desks, and many may choose to sit near familiar, like-minded people - potentially increasing conformity and eroding healthy debate. These unintended consequences erode the psychosocial safety and productivity of the wide team, but leaders are convinced it’s creating a ‘happier’ workplace because it suits their preferences.
By understanding and addressing these misperceptions around happiness, organizations can avoid well-meaning but misinformed mistakes when seeking to enhance engagement and performance. At a minimum, leaders can avoid wasting resources on initiatives that deliver questionable returns and instead focus on efforts that objectively improve employee engagement, productivity, and psychosocial safety.
To learn more about how your organization can measure and manage the impact of psychosocial risk factors in the workplace, visit https://tgsleadership.com/knowledge-hub/psychosocial-risk-factors-asca
