In a recent contribution of mine about future trends in HR, I made the point that employers will need to train employees how to optimise their own employee experience and manage their mental wellness.
One of the trendy words being used is ‘happiness’. Employers are being told to make sure their employees are happy at work to enhance their employee experience and manage their mental wellness.
The issue is how to define happiness and what leads to happiness at work. We seem to be going well beyond the issue of motivation and probably starting to explore uncharted territory.
Some tend to associate happiness with pleasure. This means employees experiencing that upsurge of joy such as when one’s favourite football team wins or one eats a good meal. At work this would mean a salary increase or taking part in a social activity with work colleagues, or – as is the case in some companies in Malta – having breakfast served at work. Such happiness is very short-term and does not lead to engagement.
People feel happier if they see the positive and concrete difference they make to others
We have had delegates attending our training courses, saying they have a good salary and that their company organises events for staff, but they are still not happy at work. The reasons for this unhappiness can be various, ranging from a lack of respect, to limited recognition for one’s skills, unfairness and discrimination, and not really knowing the purpose of their job.
Thus, linking happiness to pleasure is very superficial, self-centred and based on taking rather than giving, and ignores complicated situations such as those arising at work. It is very much transaction based.
This leads us to the conclusion that happiness at work needs to be linked not to pleasure but to something else. And that something else is meaning. The point is that while, physiologically, one can actually gauge pleasure and link it to something concrete, meaning is a very abstract term and cannot be measured.
On the other hand the idea of meaning is associated with the long-term, a deeper understanding of things, and with relationships. So linking happiness to meaning at work implies that one goes beyond quick wins and searches for relationships built on mutual respect and accountability, on give and take, and not just take. It requires people who support collaboration.
It also requires people who are not afraid and actually want to belong to something greater than themselves and that the goals they share with their colleagues really matter. These are people who feel happier if they see the positive and concrete difference that they make to others.
This discussion on happiness at work requires us to take a view on engagement that is totally different to what we have grown accustomed to. To most of us, engagement was linked to motivation and the various theories of motivation had become like a dogma to managers. These theories are slowly becoming outdated as our job expectations change.
In my recent contribution on future HR trends, I had argued that the expectation of employees is that the employer delivers an employee experience that mirrors customer experience. We all aim to have happy, delighted customers, and likewise we should aim to have happy, delighted employees.
However, happiness does not come from initiatives that deliver instant or short-term gratification, but from helping employees understand the purpose and meaning of their job. This strengthens the relationship between the employee and one’s job, colleagues and employer. The employer cannot achieve this on one’s own but needs the collaboration of employees to work together for that greater goal.