Why you shouldn't try to be happy at work

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We need to be in a good mood every day at work, because it increases productivity. We read about it in articles and hear about it at numerous trainings. But everything is not so simple. Some research confirms that if you constantly pursue happiness, you become unhappy.

Happiness makes us healthier, kinder, more productive. Happy people are happy to work and quickly climb the career ladder. This idea is now increasingly heard at seminars on employee motivation.

Company leaders have always been and remain motivated to improve employee productivity. Back in 1920, at a Western Electric factory, researchers conducted an experiment (known as), as a result of which they wanted to understand what affects labor productivity.

In pursuit of high performance, leaders now spend money on teambuilding, games, hiring fun consultants, coaches to create a positive atmosphere in the team, and top managers for happiness (yes, there is such in Google, for example). And all this is taken very seriously by company executives.

But if you take a closer look at the issue, it turns out that trying to make employees happy at work is not such a good idea.

Happy employees are unlikely to quit, they are friendly in dealing with customers, safe, and willingly participate in corporate and city events. But the catch is that happiness at work cannot be achieved. It is a myth.

First, what is happiness and how can you measure it? Is it possible, for example, to measure the depth of sadness or describe the color of love? Darrin M. McMahon mentions in his book "Happiness: History" the saying of the sage Solon, addressed to the world's richest king Croesus back in the 6th century BC: "No one living is happy." And these words can be attributed to joy, satisfaction or pleasure.

Critic Samuel Johnson believed that you can only be happy in the present moment if you are drunk. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that happiness is lying in a boat, swaying on the waves, and feeling like a god. Nothing to do with productivity. Many great people have defined happiness, and they are all somewhat similar to the statements of Johnson and Rousseau.

And despite the advanced technology, we have not come close to accurately defining happiness, says writer Will Davies in The Happiness Industry. He concludes that by developing better methods for measuring emotions and predicting behavior, we have simplified the concepts of what it means to be human and to pursue happiness.

Happiness doesn't necessarily translate into better productivity

Research on the link between happiness and job satisfaction and productivity has shown conflicting results. In one study in a UK supermarket, scientists even found that there is a feedback: the more unhappy the employees were, the better they performed. Undoubtedly, there is research showing that job satisfaction increases productivity. But the connection was very weak.

Happiness can be exhausting

The pursuit of happiness may be ineffective, but can it really hurt? Yes! The need to be happy is a heavy burden and responsibility, because a task can never be fully completed. Conversely, focusing on becoming happier makes us feel unhappy.

This has recently been demonstrated in an experiment. A group of subjects was shown a film in which a skater wins a medal. This movie usually brings a feeling of happiness after watching. But before watching, half of the group was given a note to read about the importance of happiness in life. After watching, those who read the note were less happy than the rest of the subjects.

When happiness becomes a duty, people feel unhappy if they cannot deal with it.

This has become a problem now that happiness is preached as a moral obligation. As the French writer Pascal Bruckner said, unhappiness is not just happiness, it is, even worse, the inability to be happy.

Happiness shouldn't be with you all day long

You know that it is a duty for employees of call centers and restaurants to be in high spirits. And quite tiresome. If you try to be in this state all day, you will not leave the feeling that you are communicating with a client.

But now more and more often, even those employees who do not communicate with customers are asked to look more fun. And this has unintended consequences. For example, people in a good mood are not so masterful in negotiations: they do not notice a lie. People in a bad mood achieve better results in this case. A happy employee is not everywhere and not always good. It all depends on the specifics of the work. Sometimes a good mood only gets in the way.

Waiting to be happy can ruin your relationship with your boss

If you believe that work is the place to find happiness, then the boss becomes the one who brings that happiness. Those hoping to experience the happiness of work need emotional warmth. They want to receive a constant stream of recognition and comfort from their leaders. And when they suddenly do not receive the usual emotions, it seems to them that they are being neglected, and react violently to it. Even a minor comment from the boss, such employees perceive as the fact that he completely disowned them and is going to fire them. The expectation of happiness then makes them emotionally vulnerable.

Happiness spoils relationships with family and friends

In her book Cold Intimacies, sociologist Eva Illouz notices a side effect of people trying to be more emotional at work: they start treating their personal life like work. They bring to her the techniques and techniques that the happiness coaches taught them. As a result, the atmosphere in the family becomes cold, calculating. And unsurprisingly, many of these people preferred to spend their time at work rather than at home.

Job loss is devastating

If we expect the workplace to provide us with happiness and meaning in life, a dangerous dependence on it arises. Sociologist Richard Sennett says employees who saw their employer as a source of meaning for themselves were devastated if fired. Having lost their jobs, these people not only lost income, they lost hope for happiness. They have become emotionally vulnerable, which is dangerous during times of economic instability, when they have to change jobs frequently.

Happiness makes you selfish

If you are happy, then most likely you are kind to others, right? Not really. In another study, subjects were given lottery tickets and asked how many of them they were willing to give to others and how much they would keep for themselves. Those who were in a good mood kept more tickets for themselves. If a person is happy, he is not necessarily generous. Sometimes it's even the other way around.

Happiness is loneliness

Psychologists asked several people to keep a diary for two weeks. And here's what they found: those who rated highly the desire to be always happy were lonelier. The constant pursuit of a good mood alienates us from other people.

So why, despite all the research, do we continue to think that happiness helps us perform better? According to the researchers, the answer lies in aesthetics and ideology. Happiness is a handy idea that looks good on paper. It's aesthetics. And the pursuit of universal happiness helps to avoid more serious corporate problems, conflicts in the workplace - this is an ideology.

When happy employees are assumed to be good employees, all other unpleasant questions can be hidden under the rug. It is especially convenient to assume that a person is happy if he has chosen the right job. It is convenient to deal with everyone who is undesirable in corporate life, who does not like the company's policy and regime.

The theory that everyone should be happy makes it easy to resolve disagreements about being fired. Barbara Ehrenreich explains in her book Bright-Sided that ideas about happiness at work are especially popular in times of crisis and layoffs.

The findings of these studies provide compelling reasons to rethink our expectations of job happiness.

When we are constantly looking for or expecting happiness, we get tired, react sharply to any changes, deprive our personal life of meaning, increase our vulnerability, become too gullible, selfish and lonely. By deliberately pursuing happiness, we stop enjoying the really good things - that’s the most amazing thing.

And work, like any aspect of our life, evokes many emotions. You cannot be happy all the time. Happiness is necessary, but you don't need to put everything on the altar of achieving it. The less you try to be constantly joyful at work, the more genuine joy you experience. Joy spontaneous, not imposed by trainings and team building. And it is important to look at the work soberly, to see the real picture, and not the one presented by the leaders together with the coaches, fortunately.