Happiness at work
With acknowledgements to Freehills Solicitors, Sydney.
Everyone wants to be happy.
We will spend the majority of our waking adult life at work so if we are not happy at work we will not be happy a lot of the time. Indeed, given that studies confirm the intuition that there is a close correlation between job satisfaction and life satisfaction, if we are not happy at work we may not be happy at all.
To take one example. In 1990, John Hopkins studied the prevalence of major depressive disorders across 104 occupations. Only three occupations were found to have statistically significant elevations of major depressive disorders: lawyers, kindergarten and special education teachers and secretaries. Lawyers topped the list, suffering from major depressive disorders at a rate 3.6 times higher than non lawyers who shared their key socio demographic traits. The article cites other studies establishing that lawyers suffer disproportionately from anxiety and other mental illness, alcoholism and drug abuse, divorce, suicide and ill health. |
 |
So how do we ensure happiness at work?
Does it depend on attaining promotions or occupying senior positions?
No. A number of studies on job satisfaction show that, although there is a close correlation between job satisfaction and life satisfaction, what one does and one’s position in an organisation has little impact on one’s life satisfaction. So, whether you are the janitor or the CEO makes no difference to your happiness.
|
|
Does it depend on earning more money?
No. An American study has shown that the percentage of people who are satisfied with their jobs has dropped by 8% in the last five years to just over 50%. The largest decline in work satisfaction was amongst those with the highest incomes.
I suggest that two things that are important to happiness at work are:
(a) a sense of purpose or meaning;
(b) a sense of belonging and community.
|
 |
Why is community important?
I suggest that there are two reasons.
The first is that it is “good business”. The Business Council of Australia funded a study in 2001 to identify a number of excellent workplaces in Australia, visit those workplaces and analyse the basis for their outstanding performance. The authors of this study, Dr Darryl Hull and Vivienne Read, concluded that “quality working relationships represent the central pivot on which excellent workplaces are founded”. The authors explained that “quality working relationships” involved “people relating to each other as friends, colleagues, and co workers - supporting each other, and helping to get the job done”.
The authors emphasised that quality relationships are the key to workplace excellence:
“In all our excellent work places the atmosphere of mutual trust and respect was overwhelming. We became convinced that central to every excellent workplace is an understanding that to produce quality work in Australia, one must have quality working relationships. This applies particularly to work places with high levels of uncertainty, demanding skills requirements and turbulent markets.
The research revealed that building and maintaining good working relationships requires constant renewal and reaffirmation by all parties. …
It is very important to understand that when talking about relationships at work we are not talking about friendships alone. What mattered most was the quality of the working relationships, particularly with respect to key dimensions such as trust, respect, self worth and recognition. Fundamental relationships built on that magic word – trust – could not be overestimated”.
|
|
The second reason is more fundamental.
The importance of community was considered in a study of a Pennsylvanian town called Roseto over the course of 50 odd years from the early 1920s. What the researchers found was that there was a strikingly low mortality rate from heart attacks in Roseto compared to the neighbouring towns of Bangor and Nazareth despite the fact that the standard risk factors were equally prevalent in all three communities and they were all served by the same medical facilities.
|
|
The hypothesis the researchers developed was that Roseto’s significantly better health may have been due to the fact that the town had been founded by immigrants from a town in southern Italy in the mid 1880s and, accordingly, there was still a high level of cohesive community relationships. Sure enough, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Roseto transitioned to a less cohesive, fragmented and socially isolated community, mortality rates rose to the same level as the neighbouring towns.
Since the Roseto study there have been eight large scale studies into the connection between community and health. What those studies establish is that those with a strong sense of connection and community reduce the risk of premature death by two to five times.
|
 |
So should we be exploring “how can I be a happy and healthy member of an unhappy and unhealthy workplace” or is that a quest that is bound to fail on its premise? Instead should we be seeking health and happiness in the work place through a path of selfish selflessness – “what can I do to ensure that I belong to a happy and healthy workplace”? The perfect model is unlikely to exist. But what can each of us do to make our workplace a happier and healthier community?
|
|
|