Why happiness at work matters

The average person will spend 90,000 hours – or a third of their lives – at work.¹ So, being happy at work is very important. According to the organisers of the awareness week, 27 per cent of employees have one or more bad days at work every week.

What did our survey tell us?

Of the 1,175 people who voted in our poll, 63 per cent said they are happy at work, leaving the remaining 37 per cent to say they are not.

We also asked followers what makes them happy at work or what could make work better for them.

Samuel Irwin said: “I’m in the happy position of continuing to work because I still want to, get my suitable holidays and still feel I'm contributing to something worthwhile, health, safety, wellbeing and keeping safety cool!”

Samantha Maniam said: “Flexible working hours and work from home concepts are highly appreciated and it's now already in practice in most of the companies and encouraging all companies in Malaysia to adopt to this concept 100 per cent.”

Christian Harris said: “Love the idea of International Week of Happiness at Work! For me, what makes work enjoyable is a supportive team, growth opportunities, and a healthy work-life balance.”

And Karen Mills said: “Autonomy, flexible working, home working.”

Good days and bad days

Of course, as some commenters and the awareness week organisers suggested, people’s emotions at work can vary from day to day depending on a variety of factors.

This is the seventh year that International Week of Happiness has been held. It is designed to connect people and organisations that consider work happiness important. It aims to initiate conversations on how to make being happy at work the norm. It says: “This way, we can collectively work towards putting happiness at work on the agenda everywhere and making it normal to focus on it.”

References

Forbes, Find Happiness At Work (forbes.com)