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What’s wrong with Happiness at Work?
No, I'm not trying to be ironic or clever; it's an actual question – what the heck is wrong with it?
This feels like the ultimate LinkedIn clickbait title for the host of a podcast titled accordingly. But while interviewing for the podcast, I often travel in echo chambers where the battle for Happiness and its righteous place in the workplace is already won or at least begrudgingly accepted. At the same time, reality often shows a different image.
This got me thinking. Despite an overwhelming number of studies showing the financial benefits, gains in innovation and creativity, reduced attrition, and a myriad of other positives, its widespread adoption into business jargon remains tepid at best. Instead, terms like"engagement," "well-being," and "people and culture" have become more prevalent.
Why is that? And is it important?
Happiness at Work – just not that engrained.
Let's do a quick study; X wants to work on improving happiness in the workplace, so let's find them a job!
Greater London Area on Indeed:
- "Happiness Officer" - none
- "Wellbeing Officer" - 6 jobs
- "Engagement Officer" - 53 jobs
- "People Officer" - 17 jobs
New York, NY on Indeed:
- "Happiness" - none
- "Well-being" - 2 jobs
- "Engagement" - 241 jobs
- "People" – 120 jobs
Hmm, it's getting a little bit more complex, right?
While some organizations might see this as part of the HR remit, I purposely left these out, as, in my opinion, those inspiring creatives and caring individuals who want to create bursts of Happiness shouldn't spend 90% of their time holding disciplinary meetings, developing improvement plans, conducting exit interviews or other often demoralizing traditional HR tasks.
Instead, we must reimagine HR's role and relationship with employee happiness and engagement. The traditional model of HR as a separate administrative entity is outdated and ineffective in fostering a positive workplace culture. HR can't be some off-campus place (or, even worse, the increasingly common, outsourced), where you go when in trouble, have a problem, or need to pick up some paperwork. Happiness, Culture, and engagement cannot be steered effectively from this ivory tower.
But I digress.
I believe:
Happy worker = Happy Company;
Stressed worker = Stressed Company
Now, that's an oversimplification, but as a consultant, I notice daily how hard it is to convince investment into happiness to managers, boards of directors, and even the employees, the very benefactors of this investment.
So what the heck is so wrong with Happiness that somehow we value it enough to make it a central pinnacle in "The Year in Review", yet it's also the first thing out the door when "it matters."
- Is Happiness just a dirty word?
- Is the unsatiable appetite with ROI and quantifiable metrics the culprit?
- Or is the answer to this question found in history and the core of Western culture?
As always, there is no wholesale solution or one perpetrator. Cutting these reasons up in neat little boxes, or even dichotomies, is helpful heuristically, but rarely (if ever) divides like that in real life.
So, while we dive into those points separately, remember that the interplay of all elements in every unique setting contributes to a higher or lesser degree of adoption of the word and practices of Happiness (at Work).
Is happiness a dirty word, or is it just unmeasurable?
Dirty words. I won’t give you an example, but you know them, you use them, we all do to varying degrees, even in the workplace. It’s not only for sailors. While Happiness is not a swear word, it is quite the opposite; somehow, in a work context, I always find myself defending it, explaining it, and justifying it as if it doesn’t really belong.
Have you ever tried defining the word happiness? Think about it; it’s not that easy. Your happiness is not my happiness. You might find happiness in using as many of the aforementioned dirty words, which might make me cringe. Happiness is thus subjective, and every individual must fill in the meaning—a tough job for corporations looking for cookie-cutter solutions.
Linguistically, it’s also a funky word. This abstract concept derives its meaning through more concrete source domains like OBJECTS (e.g., "I found happiness"), LOCATIONS (e.g., "She's in a state of happiness"), and FORCES (e.g., "Filled with happiness"). Also, semantically, happiness is different from, for example, joy – technically and according to the thesaurus, a synonym, yet we are often “in” joy as though it were a liquid we can fill ourselves up with – but search “for” happiness, as if it’s a journey with a destination.
The differences between words with similar meanings are tricky to explain, often in pain and detriment have I spent time explaining to the second language learner why a certain word did not work in a specific context. Freedom or liberty, ideas and thoughts, are you my foe or my enemy? What contributes to choosing one word for another, especially when those words are almost identical and commonly used? One highly entertaining study examined whether metaphorical patterns influenced lexical choices. Are individuals more likely to use the word happiness while being surveyed in the supermarket searching for, e.g., cereal, and are they more likely to use joy when simultaneously drinking water? And marvelously, this seems to be the case.
When happiness has to derive its meaning from each unique context, and when we acknowledge that we don't exactly know what happiness is, how to achieve it, and that it's about the journey—not to mention that it's different for every individual and organization—you have a hard sell. On the other hand, well-being or engagement metrics with more direct and quantifiable objectives are way more manageable and provide clearer insights into workplace dynamics. Metrics such as employee satisfaction scores, turnover rates, and productivity levels offer organizations actionable data that can be analyzed and improved upon. On the other hand, change without knowing where we are going is tough, not impossible, but it meets a lot more resistance and potential mutiny along the way than the captain, who is certain where the ship will dock next and when.
As if this wasn't hard enough, happiness is also a mundane word used by the commoner on the street, and mundane words don’t make for flashy job titles. Senior VP of Social Talent Optimisation, anyone? It makes that business card much more authoritative, even though nobody knows what that job entails. These words signal ingroup status and jargon for the cool kids.
Happiness is subjective, abstract, ambiguous linguistically, and commonly used outside of business jargon, and this all seems to stack against adopting the word Happiness in a business context.
Into the Heart of Business.
"It's called work for a reason. It's not supposed to be fun"
~ a thing people say
Culture is the invisible strings that puppet and guide our behavior and interactions, sometimes conscious and, more often, unconscious. All forms of cultural influence guide our organizations, internal and external. Like Russian nesting dolls, all interactions, from the representation of organization as a whole entity to the casual chat at the coffee machine, everything is guided by culture.
While many factors influence culture, religious ethos continues to be one of the most important. Whether religion is up or down in your country, its code of conduct has long been enshrined in laws, and societal expectations have carried over from one generation to the next.
In the Western World, particularly N-America. one incredibly influential factor continues to be the Protestant Work Ethic: fulfilling your God-given purpose, whether predestined for salvation or not (they seem to have the best marketing manager known to man), is typified by 4 characteristics:
- Diligence and hard work as virtues
- Viewing work as a calling or vocation
- Frugality and responsible stewardship of resources
- Individual responsibility and self-reliance
According to the protestant work ethic, just by going to work, whatever you find there, you are already on your way to find happiness. That, combined with happiness frequently being conceptualized as an individual achievement closely linked to personal success and self-esteem in Protestantism, doesn't promote a more active role for organizations beyond monetary value. Moreover, this type of work-ethic due to complex historical and temporary factors, as well as a mixture of hard-and soft power continues to be prevalent across many countries, organisations and the global market. All pushing an underlying cultural belief that work is inherently not meant to be enjoyable or pleasurable but a necessity distinct from fun.
Protestantism does not live in a vacuum and influences from other regions and religions are of importance. In some other cultures happiness is viewed more as a communal construct, achieved and maintained through group cohesion and mutual support. This explains why predominantly Catholic Portugal, in combination with their specific economic circumstances, is the front-runner in promoting Happiness at Work or why a Japanese concept like "Ikigai" – your reason for living - finds its way into the business curriculum.
However, the protestant work ethic, is likely the most beneficial for the capitalist structure we continue to promote and will probably persist in contrast to a more optimistic and communal view of work until a time of more significant societal change.
What does this all mean?
Overcoming barriers to adopting a more holistic view of work that includes happiness may require a paradigm shift in conceptualizing and discussing emotional well-being in professional settings or even more radical shifts. What do we do until such time arrives, and how do we help it get there?
I’m not sure to be honest. We have two options.
Either we align ourselves with the business jargon, disguise our happiness motives in heavy, black-rimmed glasses, covertly titled engagement or well-being, and smuggle this Trojan horse into every business we work with.
Or we can pitch our tent outside. If change makers only consult reality for possibilities, reality might never really change, and we keep banging our heads against glass ceilings.
Both arguments are valid for now, and it’s up to you. In the meantime, I will continue to do a bit of both.
Elisa Tuijnder
Sources:
Uchida,Yukiko & Norasakkunkit, Vinai & Kitayama, Shinobu. (2004). CulturalConstructions of Happiness: Theory and Empirical Evidence. Journal of HappinessStudies. 5. 223-239. 10.1007/s10902-004-8785-9.
Tseng,Meylysa & Hu, Yiran & Han, Wen-Wei & Bergen, Benjamin. (2005).“Searching for Happiness” or “Full of Joy”? Source Domain Activation Matters.31.
https://c2fo.com/resources/market-trends/20-examples-of-overused-business-jargon-and-what-you-can-say-instead/
https://pumble.com/blog/business-communication-words-phrases/