Dutch occupational and organizational psychologist, social psychologist and professor of Occupational and Organizational Psychology at Erasmus University. That's what can be found about him on Wikipedia (Yes, he even has his own Wikipedia page). We're talking about Prof. Arnold Bakker. With his love of research on the well-being of working people, he is the prime candidate to ask some questions about work happiness.
Bakker tells me that there are two different types of work happiness: hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness. A mouthful, but Bakker explains it in great detail: "Hedonic work happiness is a positive affective experience that can change from day to day. The experience is characterized by the presence of positive emotions, such as joy and interest, and the absence of negative emotions, such as sadness and anger. Eudaimonic work happiness is the positive experience of having succeeded at something difficult or accomplished something complicated. This is a long-term experience, felt, for example, after writing a book or running a marathon." So Eudaimonic is actually a higher form of hedonic and you don't have it every day.
Work happiness as a business model
"There have been many meta-analyses of the effects of happiness, positive emotions, job satisfaction and engagement," Bakker says. These analyses look at the average effect of dozens or hundreds of studies at a time. "The results from these analyses show that the effects of happiness, even in the work situation, are very favorable." When asked if work happiness is a new business model, Bakker replied, "Happiness is not a business model per se, but if we put all the scientific results together, we see that the employee experience of happiness has positive effects on the individual person (e.g., openness to new experiences and creativity), and on the organization as a whole. Because work is done creatively and efficiently and people are able to put in great effort, better performance will be achieved. If all this is taken into account in the organization, there will be much benefit (and thus new business) to be gained in the long run." So it does have an effect on organizational performance. "Of course we need to continue to examine whether work happiness has negative sides, but we hardly see this in research at the moment," continued Bakker.
In 15 years
"In 15 years, we'll be in the same place we are today if we don't apply what we know about job happiness in organizations. Because organizations are still made and lived by people, not robots, how people perform (or how robots are programmed) depends on people's well-being and creativity. This means that organizations will be especially successful if they make people and their job happiness more central. It is vital that managers, who are often primarily business or economics trained, are aware of this."
Work happiness, a hot-topic lately. But what factors actually contribute more to work happiness? And does work happiness have to do with the opportunity to grow and develop? And how do you, as management, make your employees aware of these development opportunities? Is work happiness perhaps even a new business model? And if it were a business model, should it also be measurable? This and much more about happiness at work can be found in our happiness at work magazine. You can download it here.