Happiness At Work

Most of us find it difficult to define what happiness is but we can recognise it when we feel it. Likewise we can immediately identify unhappiness when it is felt. There are widely debated issues around happiness over the past decades as philosophers struggle to analyse what it means and how to define it (Warr & Clapperton 2010).The advance of positive psychology in recent years has drawn attention to happiness and other positive states rather than previous studies which focused on illness, depression and other negative outcomes and experiences (Fisher 2010). Happiness, in the form of joy, surfaces in every category of ‘basic’ human emotion and feeling happy is essential to human experience (Diener 1996). The purpose of this essay is to show

These are classed into two separate groups. One group is the components you want from and within your working surroundings and these are: achieving your goals, having clear objectives, raising issues that are of importance to you and feeling secure in your job. The other group consists of the components your working environment and surrounding offers you, this includes: being listened to, getting positive feedback, being respected by your manager or boss and being shown appreciation for your work. Happiness at work can have an incredible impact on an organisation as a whole and also plays a significant role in an individual’s life and heightens the overall well-being of the individual (Wong & NgeeHeng, 2009; Staples & Higgins, 1998).This can be seen in a number of statistics that Pryce has developed through research and various studies over four years. If you are happy, Pryce has discovered that you are 155 per cent happier in your job, 50 per cent more motivated contribute 25 per cent more and love their job 79 per cent more. (Pryce

The global approach asks questions about a job overall when the bottom line attitude is of interest. Examples of these global approach satisfaction questionnaires are: The Job in General Scale (Ironson et al 1989) and the Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire satisfaction subscale (Cammann et al 1979). The facet approach is used to determine which aspects of the job produce satisfaction or dissatisfaction. It covers different satisfactions with principal aspects. Facets commonly assessed include various rewards such as pay, working conditions, hours of work, other people such as co-workers or managers, the nature of work or the organisation itself. This facet approach can give a deeper insight into an individual’s job satisfaction than the global approach. Examples of frequently used facet satisfaction scales are: The JSS, the Job Descriptive Index (Smith et al 1969), the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Weiss et al 1967) and the Job Diagnostic Survey (Hackman & Oldham 1975). Many other job satisfaction scales have been developed and there are advantages and disadvantages to both in terms of expressing job satisfaction in a workplace. The advantage to using an existing job satisfaction scale is that they cover the major facets of satisfaction; however, the disadvantage is that they will not include more specific areas of satisfaction or dissatisfaction that may be an issue for a particular organisation