Why happiness is good for business.

Why should employers take steps to help make their employees happy? Two reasons.

First, because it’s the right thing to do. A 2001 study showed that Americans spend more than twice as much time at work as in leisure, and for many people, their work dominates their life. So happiness at work is critically important for people’s general happiness.

Second, employee happiness is GOOD FOR BUSINESS. Research shows many ways in which happy employees out-perform their less happy peers.

A note of caution: this research is pretty strong stuff. It seems very harsh toward the less-happy people. As I read it, I kept thinking, “Life isn’t fair. The folks who are already feeling great are getting all the benefits, while the less-happy people are getting sick more often, getting worse work evaluations, and making fewer friends.”

Another note of caution: remember that correlation is not causation. It might be that happy people perform better because qualities that tend to make a person happier (such as extraversion, emotional stability, and energy) make a person perform better at work. So it's not the happiness per se that makes a person perform better, but other factors of personality.

Also, there’s an issue of feedback. For example, people generally like happier people more than less-happy people. So do managers rate employees more highly just because they like them, even if less-happy people might be performing just as well? Could be.

That said, why do happy people do better at work?

Teamwork
Happy people are good for teams. People like being around happier people much more than less-happy people. Happy people are perceived to be more friendly, warm, and even more physically attractive.

Also, research shows that happy people tend to be more cooperative, less self-absorbed, and to be able to offer the empathy needed in close relationships. They’re more willing to help other people—say, by sharing information or pitching in to help a colleague. Then, because they’ve helped others, others tend to help them.

Leadership
Happier people are viewed as more assertive and self-confident than less-happy people, and better at public speaking. They perform better on managerial tasks, like leadership and mastery of information.

Creativity and problem-solving
Positive moods improve problem-solving and creativity by making it easier for people to think with flexibility and complexity. Laughter, too, helps people think expansively.

Studies show that when people are put in a good mood, they choose higher goals, do better, and persist longer.

Studies also show that happy people will search for new answers to problems, while depressed people are more concerned with avoiding errors (of course, for certain jobs, this could be an advantage).

Emotional contagion“Emotional contagion” is a strong psychological effect in which we “catch” the happy, sad, or angry moods of others.

An employee in a happy, energetic mood will help boost the moods of others—
particularly important, obviously, when that person is engaged with customers, clients, patients, or a work team.

Unfortunately, negative moods are more contagious than positive moods, and one crabby employee can trigger a wave of bad feelings. And because people try to steer clear, unhappy people find it harder to be effective.

Absenteeism and turn-over
At the same time that happy people are more likely to show superior performance, they’re also less likely to show counterproductive behaviors like burnout, absenteeism, counter and non-productive work, work disputes, or retaliatory behavior.

Health-care costs
Happy people tend to be healthier than unhappy people. They have a stronger immune function. They have more tolerance for pain. They act in healthier ways than unhappy people do—e.g., by exercising more and eating more healthfully.

But here's a question. If all this is true, how do you explain, for example, Hollywood and Wall Street?

These folks are being paid a ton of money to be creative, to take educated risks, to work with large numbers of other people, and to perform at a very high level. But are their workplaces models of happiness, support, and encouragement? Nope.

So the question is – why? Do those employers know something we don’t about getting the best work out of people through stress, competition, and fear? Or does it take so much more discipline and effort to sustain happy workplaces that these industries can’t be bothered? Or is happiness so individual that looking at a particular industry doesn’t tell us much about the individuals and group working within it? Or are the people in those jobs happy despite (or because of) the nature of their workplaces?

Hmmmm….

Tomorrow I’m going to post about the steps that employers can take to help boost employees’ happiness.

Comments

[Marc]

Enough is enough. Being an extravert does NOT make one a happier person. Being an extravert makes one need other people around in order to regain one's energy and vitality. The intravert minority can be very happy by themselves. Judging intraverts by extravert standards is unfair and not very smart either. Advising extraverts to be around others in order to be happy is a good idea. Advising intraverts to do the same is bad advice. And claiming that one has to be an extravert in order to be happy is judging the entire world by your orientation. So please just stop it.

[Monica Ricci]

Gretchen, how odd that this is your post today. I was in my car thinking some random thoughts, when I began thinking about how a person who has a positive, happy attitude is probably more likely to be chosen for promotion within a company, or even hired away from that company into a better position. Happiness is a choice and like all choices, it has repercussions. Perhaps they are positive ones.
~Monica

[Gretchen Rubin]

To Marc's point -- surprisingly, research demonstrates that in fact, acting extraverted makes people feel happier, EVEN INTROVERTS. And both introverts and extraverts feel more pleasant emotions when in social situations.

As introverts push themselves to be more social, they get a boost in mood, and that in turn allows them to be more social...a good cycle.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the link between acting in an extraverted way (talking in a group, acting assertively, asking a question, being adventurous) and feeling happy is very well-established.

This might be worth a whole post, in fact...
a very interesting issue.

[annmarie]

OK, I'm going to have to go with Marc on this one. I too am becoming increasingly impatient with the citations of research showing extraversion to be an element of happiness.

I suspect this is seriously flawed research in that if a group is devalued or looked down upon (as is the case in American culture with people who like to read, be alone, etc.)they are going to feel out of step and bad about themselves. I'll bet you could find similar results about race, social class, sexual orientation, and so forth.

The reason this is a hot-button issue for me is that it has taken me most of my life and a lot of my own research to discover that I'm just fine the way I am, and what's more, there is a group of people out there (we don't hold meetings, obviously) who fall into my category. And we're HAPPY just chatting with a neighbor once a week or so, or living with a loner spouse or by ourselves or with our dogs. (And no, we AREN'T serial killers; being a loner, contrary to almost all press reports, is not germane to their behavior.) I would describe myself as extremely happy living and working alone (for the most part) and seeing and talking to people in smaller doses than what might be considered normal.

This is obviously a somewhat complex issue. There are sensitivity elements (see Elaine Aron's work). There are social aspects, and there might even be simple personal preference. (See "Party of One.")

I apologize for the long post, but I can't help but feel that it does a disservice to those who are struggling to feel right about themselves to perpetuate myths. Thanks if you read this far!

[karenlim]

I agree fully on the point about Emotional contagion.

When we are feeling negative over the job, the universe is sending a signal to us that what we are feeling is not in alignment with what we are doing.

It does not necessary mean we have to quit our job. It is more important to look inwards and examine why we are unhappy and is there something we could do about it.

I share my true life experience on how I move out of an unhappy job:-
http://secretofunlimitedprosperity.com/21/law-of-attraction-the-secret-to-control-your-thoughts-day-2/

Warmest Regards
Karen

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[Elissa Wurf]

Extraversion relates to happiness because the "factor structure" of extraversion includes components related to cheerfulness--at least as "Big Five" personality theorists have defined it. In studies done using factor analysis, happiness and unhappiness ("neuroticism," in the Big Five personality literature) are defined somewhat arbitrarily as if they were unrelated. To some extent positive emotions and negative emotions are indeed unrelated, as Richard Davidson's work on cerebral assymmetry shows (the left hemisphere responds more to positive emotions, the right more to negative). However, because of the factor analytic method in which one specifies a priori to make factors "orthogonal" (independent), happiness may correlate with extraversion in significant part because of a methodological artifact of how the concepts are defined in the research literature.

In addition, effects may well differ across cultures. For example, while strongly introverted children in the U.S. are more likely to change their level of introversion to become more extraverted than extraverted children are to change to become more introverted, the OPPOSITE is true in Japan, where introversion is more culturally valued. Extraversion may correlate with happiness in the U.S. because it is culturally valued, and feeling that you are a good fit to your culture/environment promotes feelings of well-being.