the research we have ignored about the happiness at work
TRANSCRIPT
MOTIVATING PEOPLE
The Research We Have Ignored About Happiness At Workplace
Andre Spicer Carl Cederström July/21/2015
About Author❏ André Spicer is a professor of Organizational Behavior at Cass
Business School in London and the co-author of
The Wellness Syndrome.
❏ Carl Cederström is an Associate Professor of Organization Theory at Stockholm University and the co-author of The Wellness Syndrome.
Objective of the Study
❖ Do we continue to hold on to the belief that happiness can improve a workplace?
❖ It’s actually not clear that encouraging happiness at work is always a good idea.
To start, we don’t really know what happiness is, or how to measure it.
Happiness doesn’t necessarily lead to increased productivity
❖ Happiness can be exhausting.
❖ It won’t necessarily get you through the work day.
❖ Happiness could damage your relationship with your boss.
❖ It could also hurt your relationship with friends and family.
❖ It could make losing your job that much more devastating.
❖ Happiness could make you selfish.
❖ It could also make you lonely.
Recommendation & Suggestions
❖ Happiness can be exhausting, make us overreact, drain our personal life of meaning, increase our vulnerability, make us more gullible, selfish and lonely.
❖ Most striking is that consciously pursuing happiness can actually drain the sense of joy we usually get from the really good things we experience.
❖ Maybe the less we seek to actively pursue happiness through our jobs, the more likely we will be to actually experience a sense of joy in them — a joy which is spontaneous and pleasurable, and not constructed and oppressive.
References ❖ Darrin M. McMahon -Happiness: A History
❖ Will Davies -The Happiness Industry
❖ Eva Illouz -Cold Intimacies
Learnings
Happiness, of course, is a great thing to experience, but nothing that can be willed into existence.
Maybe the less we seek to actively pursue happiness through our jobs, the more likely we will be to actually experience a sense of joy in them — a joy which is spontaneous and pleasurable, and not constructed and oppressive.
