Happiness & Good Work Part 1

Unhappiness & Sickness

Happiness is feeling good. Unhappiness is feeling bad. As your happiness levels at work reduce, the number of negative thoughts (such as worry, anxiety) that you have increases substantially. These negative thoughts trigger the release of stress hormones.

When the body is stressed over a long period if time, the constant flooding with adrenalin and other stress hormones has a significant detrimental effect on your:

• Physical resilience - you become tired easily
• Immune resilience - your immunity decreases
• Mental resilience - your threshold to handle everyday ups and downs of work and life decreases

Additionally people who are not feeling good tend to stop looking after themselves well (taking exercise, eating well, relaxing etc) - this further reduces your physical and mental capacity.

All this results in:

• Absenteeism - people taking days off to have "mental holiday" from the cause of the stress
• Sickness - people are more likely to become ill and then take longer to recover
• Lower productivity - people are not able to work to their normal full creative capacity whilst at work
• High turnover - people who are not happy will leave to find work that makes them happier

All of which results in the organisation having higher costs and a lower human creative capacity to do the work required in the organisation.

Happiness & Engagement

Happy people do not have so many negative thoughts resulting in less physical stress and less mental stress. This significantly reduces absenteeism, sickness and turnover.

Additionally happy people are more engaged in their work (see our post on positive psychology) - this is one of the key targets of human resource management as it allows organisations to improve their competitive advantage because their people are more productive, creative and innovative.

What is good work?

In simple terms, good work can be defined as:

• Work that reduces stress
• Work that maximises engagement

Go to next post "Happiness & Good Work Part 2" to look at the key factors of designing good work.

Source articles:

• Gwinnett Business Journal - Dec 2006 - How to reduce employee sick days taken by cutting work stress
• Science Daily - Feb 2007 - Why do humans and primates get more stress related diseases than other animals
• www.peoplemanagement.co.uk - 25 Jan 2007 - Core values by Steve Smethurst
• www.peoplemanagement.co.uk - 25 Jan 2007 - The De-stress Call by Anna Scott
• www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/wellbeing - Jan 2007 - Get the Right Fit by Joy Persaud
• www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/wellbeing - Jan 2007 - Well-Founded Firms by Jane Simms
• www.peoplemanagement.co.uk - Dec 2006 - Merrily on High by Nick Marks