Well-Being at Work

The full-time employed spend at least half their waking hours working, so it is a very important avenue for well-being. Happiness at work has been examined through job satisfaction, work engagement, positive affect, and climate. In addition, there is increasing concern with corporate social responsibility, business ethics, and corporate citizenship.

Studies of life satisfaction generally show higher levels of satisfaction and happiness among the employed than the unemployed (Dolan, Peasgood, & White, 2008). For example, in their survey of UK satisfaction levels, the Office of National Statistics (2012) found twice as many of the unemployed as the employed reporting their life satisfaction as less than 7 out of 10. Exceptions to this rule include the healthy voluntarily early-retired with ample finances (Haworth, 1997). In the UK, the United States, and various other countries, high unemployment has been found to have a negative association with well-being (Frey & Stutzer, 2002).

The centrality of work to well-being is not surprising when you think of the number of benefits it offers: an identity, opportunities for social interaction and support, purpose, time filling, engaging challenges, and possibilities for status, apart from the provision of income. Jahoda (1982) went further and argued that it is mainly work that supplies time structure, social contact, collective purpose, social identity and status, and regular activity—five factors whose presence she found to be central to a sense of well-being.

Part of the benefit gained from work may be attributed to its social opportunities. The social importance of work is highlighted by Hartner, Schmidt, and Keyes (2003), who found having a best friend at work predicts well-being.

Work also provides opportunities for experiencing flow—the psychological state of absorption that entails the exercise of challenging skills (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1988). Haworth (1997) found flow was more common in work than leisure, though Delle-Fave (2001) reported finding flow less commonly at work among white-collar staff than professionals such as doctors and teachers.

Work challenges such as high workload and complex tasks are generally positively related to job satisfaction, and hindrance stress factors such as an unclear role and inadequate resources are negatively related (Podsakoff, LePine, & LePine, 2007). Increasing job intensity can lead to problems with work–life balance. Schwartz and Ward (2004) distinguish between satisficing and maximizing. Maximizers tend to be perfectionists who try to ensure everything is right before they are willing to submit work, for example. Satisficers are more inclined to do a good enough job, balancing the amount of energy they put in with the importance of the tasks. It is satisficers who tend to be happier with their lot in life.

Warr (1987) and his colleagues have investigated well-being at work in a range of settings. Warr (1999) concludes that a combination of personal and environmental influences act to facilitate or constrain individual well-being. The environmental influences center on opportunity for control (Warr, 1990), environmental clarity (including feedback and predictability), opportunity for skill use, externally generated goals, variety, opportunity for interpersonal contact, valued social position, availability of money, and physical security. The influence of these variables is not linear, as the effect of some varies according to the degree to which they are present. For example, whereas some opportunity for control and skill use generally improves well-being, too much can be experienced as coercion with a corresponding decline in the sense of well-being (Warr, 2006). Equally, a job that has little or no challenge is also often experienced as unsatisfying. (See Warr, 2007, for amplification of his approach.)

Job-related well-being interrelates with general life satisfaction (Judge & Watanabe, 1993). Like well-being more generally, work satisfaction appears to be affected by dispositional variables. Extraversion is positively related and neuroticism negatively related to job satisfaction (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002). In a study using longitudinal data, Straw, Bell, and Clausen (1986) found that affective disposition in junior high school was a fair predictor of attitudes to work in middle life (40–60 years) with a correlation of around .30 to .40.

The perceived meaningfulness of work has been related to well-being and work engagement (May, Gilson, & Hartner, 2004). Work resources such as support and information have been shown to influence work engagement, for example, the dedication, energy, and absorption of teachers (Bakker, Hakanen, Demerouti, & Xanthopoulou, 2007).

Given that people spend so much of their time at work ostensibly to earn income, it is worth noting that in affluent countries the relation between income and well-being is not as strong as most people expect. In Western societies, the correlation is around .13 (Diener, Sandvik, Seidlitz, & Diener, 1993). Surprisingly, though GDP has gone up threefold and working conditions have improved markedly since World War II in the United States, life satisfaction ratings in the United States and United Kingdom have shown relatively little change over that period (Myers, 2000). If we compare the percentage of people who are satisfied with their lives with the average income for different countries, we find that the proportion of people who rate themselves happy rises up to a point. But for countries with an average income above about £20,000, the percentage of people who are happy varies relatively little as income rises further. This does not mean there is no relationship between income and happiness, because a greater proportion of the bottom 30% of earners are more dissatisfied than the top 30% (Myers & Deiner, 1995). The New Economics Foundation argues that people at a level of income above minimum might be happier if they took productivity gains as time off, rather than seeking further remuneration, to allow more time for interaction with friends and family (Marks, 2011).

This idea that, above a certain basic minimum level of comfort, it is other factors that account for high levels of satisfaction is now generating interest among economists and in political circles (Layard, 2005). Key factors that are important for happiness include the level of control individuals have over their life, the amount of coherence among their values, goals, and activities; and the quality of their social relationships (see Kasser, Chapter 6, this volume; Sagiv, Roccas, & Oppenheim, Chapter 7, this volume). Among work characteristics, autonomy appears to be particularly important for happiness at work (Karasek, 1979).

Comparison with others can also affect how an individual rates his or her well-being. Perceptions of fair treatment at work are associated with well-being and job engagement (e.g., Lawson, Noblet, & Rodwell, 2009). The physical environment at work can also have an effect. For example, the majority of workers in windowless offices report feeling dissatisfied with their work environment (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989).

Professional Development

In organizations there is a general appreciation of the centrality of people, even in technical spheres. Perhaps this is one reason why much of the training offered to managers and professionals is concerned with psychologically oriented personal, interpersonal, and group skills such as listening, communication, leadership, and group process skills (see also Kauffman, Joseph, & Scoular, Chapter 23, this volume). Most managers in large organizations complete personality inventories designed to analyze their leadership, decision making, and learning styles, for example, and take part in role plays designed to help them relate to staff more sensitively and effectively.

The importance of an element of individualized personal and professional development is also now institutionalized in kitemarks such as Investors in People (IIP). Among others things, IIP ensures that attention is given to employees' personal and professional development needs by requiring that these needs be specified through an individual development plan, normally now included in the annual staff appraisal. This can sometimes turn an appraisal into more of a coaching session, in which the employee has a chance to voice his or her own development needs. An element of continuous professional development is now compulsory for most professionals in Western nations. This may involve, for example, the commitment of 5 days a year to training and updating. As part of a process of building trust, some companies have given employees money to undertake any training course they wish.

Currently training is often built around the notion of competencies. Competencies derive from a model of education that presumes skills can be acquired and transferred to other settings by inputting knowledge in which the individual is deficient. The use of a competency-based approach, though endorsed by governments and taken up by most management organizations, is not without its critics, including human resource professionals. One critique is that knowledge and skill are situated and do not transfer readily to other situations, so the idea of generalized competencies transferring to new settings is suspect (see Sparrow, 2002, for a review).

However, it would be a mistake to think that organizational development is entirely oriented to fixing the negative. Organizations tend to be quick to take up new approaches, such as emotional intelligence (Caruso, Salovey, Brackett, & Mayer, Chapter 32, this volume; Salovey & Mayer, 1990), psychological capital (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007), and building on strengths (Kauffman, Joseph, & Scoular, Chapter 23, this volume). In discussing emotional intelligence, Goleman (1995) highlights the importance of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill in management capability. As it is taught in organizations, emotional intelligence typically reframes material once presented as social skills. Nevertheless, it serves to highlight strengths as well as weaknesses and to draw attention to noncognitive aspects of interpersonal relating.

Teamwork

Team membership can provide social support and satisfy a need to belong. Various studies suggest that working in a team leads to improved well-being for its members (Sonnentag, 1996). On the basis of a series of studies with health workers, Carter and West (1999) found that employees in well-defined teams reported better psychological health than those working in ambiguously defined teams and those who worked alone.

Groups are central to most organizations' endeavors and are increasingly important as organizations decentralize and push responsibility down to multidisciplinary project teams. Perhaps for this reason there is an appreciation that many organizational problems are people problems and that group dynamics are important.

Most managers are familiar with the idea that new groups may be expected to go through stages, colorfully known, for example, as forming, storming, norming, and performing (Tuckman, 1965). Because teams normally need time to coalesce into a working unit, it has been common for new project teams to go off-site for a team-building exercise to aid the process, an event that may involve leisure rather than work-related activities. Such activities afford time for the development of interpersonal relationships, the goal being to build the individuals' commitment to one another and to the team. Commitment to the group and participation in decision making have been found to enhance innovation (West, 2000; West & Anderson, 1996). For example, adventure training takes managers off-site and presents teams with various physical challenges such as abseiling, crossing cold streams, and engaging in outdoor games. Proponents argue that team spirit ensures participants will help one another complete the various challenges and that the increased confidence from completing tasks that they previously found fearful, or deemed beyond their competence, has a positive payoff in workplace activities.

Some of the personal, interpersonal, and group skills that are accepted as helping organizational groups to function well include listening to others, acknowledging others' positions, affording recognition for good work, adopting a win-win attitude to negotiation, applying principles of conflict resolution where parties disagree, and affirming positive qualities.

Like personal and professional development, group process training shows a certain psychological maturity in its emphasis on valuing and working with diversity. The emphasis on valuing diversity is partly due to the successful popularization of empirical work, which showed that successful work groups were more likely to contain a mix of personality types, and that groups containing too many of one particular personality type, for example shapers (task leaders), could flounder (Belbin, 1981; Margerison and McCann, 1990). The use of personality and team-role inventories (Belbin, 1981) in work settings can lead group members to a better appreciation of the consequences of cognitive style and personality type for ways of working, and of the importance of differing roles. This, in turn, tends to lead to greater respect for and tolerance of others. Diversity of perspectives within a group is known to be important for successful creativity and innovation in organizations.

Most organizations utilize some form of small group–focused enquiry. Whereas many organizational enquiry processes start from the problem and work forward to a solution, positively based processes are increasingly used with individuals and groups.

A well-known affirmative approach used in organizations is the strengths-based appreciative inquiry. This was developed in the 1980s (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005). Appreciative inquiry aims to inspire and implement change by focusing on the positive, asking questions, positively reframing, and building a positive image of the future through a four-stage positive process that builds on what is working well. This approach is used by individuals, pairs, and small and large groups.

One begins with a positively framed topic such as having excellent working relationships or being a good communicator.

1. Discovery—You ask positive questions about the past and what is working well in the present, such as: “Recall a time when everything was going well. Describe your role and how you felt. What are your best qualities? How does your work help the organization succeed?”
2. Dream—You are then asked to imagine what might be—a desired future when things are working well, noticing what is different from the present or how you could reinforce the positive, for example, how you have changed and key things that needed to happen to realize these changes.
3. Design—The next stage focuses on the practicalities of how to get to this desired future by attending to the positive changes in more detail: how your behavior has changed, anything you are doing differently, what others are saying and doing, and what systems, processes, and strategies are needed to realize the dream.
4. Delivery—The last stage involves preparation for the implementation of the work needed to make the dream reality.

The idea is that by focusing on the positive, people are more motivated to take action to bring their dreams into reality (Cooperrider & Witney, 2005).

Various positively oriented, solutions-focused approaches, mostly derived from psychotherapy, are now used in organizations with individuals and groups. For example, Jackson and McKergrow's (2007) solutions focus approach is based on various positively framed tools, including:

1. Platform—Considering how participants would like the situation to be different.
2. Future perfect—Using pictures, models, creative writing, or performance to describe the desired future.
3. Scale—Estimating on a numerical scale how far they are toward reaching the goal.
4. Counters—Describing what has moved them up the scale toward the goal.
5. Small steps—Describing what could move them further up the scale.
6. Affirming—Typically the facilitator encourages group members to affirm each other through compliments and exercises.

Positive Organizational Practices

Much of the organizational framework within which organizational practices are considered tends to orient toward fixing the negative. For example, managers solve problems and troubleshoot, training is dominated by a competency framework that aims to input the skills in which staff are deficient, and stress is perceived as a major problem. Researchers investigate burnout and glass ceilings. Until recently, organizational science has been very largely directed at negative aspects of the working environment, such as the effects of downsizing, job insecurity, problems with stress and burnout, and lack of career development in a world with less full-time employment.

In contrast, organizational development has not had quite the same negative bias found in much of caring and adult developmental psychology prior to the positive psychology movement. Indeed, many organizational interventions of the late 20th century had a positive orientation. Popular organizational literature is dominated by tales of the practices of successful people and organizations. For example, Covey (1990) talks of the seven habits of highly effective people. (He argues that these are proactivity, beginning with the end in mind, putting first things first, thinking win-win, seeking to understand before being understood, synergizing, and balanced self-renewal.)

Equally, much managerial practice is positively oriented. Managers are encouraged to be proactive rather than reactive and to take time to gain buy-in and commitment up front, rather than try to mop up resistance to change after the event. Organizations have visions and mission statements that define where they would like to see themselves going and the values they espouse en route. Positive behavior such as recognizing and praising staff for good work is normal practice and an open climate in which mistakes are forgiven are encouraged. Commentators such as Handy (2001) have argued that the best staff prefer to gravitate to organizations that share their values, rather than opting to work for organizations with better pay and prospects who do not share their values.

There has also been a long history of work on flourishing in organizations, addressing quality of life, job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, commitment, and engagement, for example. Much of this work is now being drawn together and taken forward under two banners: positive organizational scholarship (Cameron & Spreitzer, 2011), which focuses on positive characteristics, processes, outcomes, and flourishing in organizations; and positive organizational behavior (Luthans, 2002), which addresses various aspects of psychological capital. Positive organizational behavior and positive organizational scholarship aim to reorient organizations to focusing on positive qualities such as psychological capital, prosocial motivation, work engagement, positive emotions, engagement, creativity, and trust (Cameron & Spreitzer, 2011; Luthans, 2002; Luthans et al., 2007). Critics such as Hackman (2009) argue against a purely positive focus in organizations. Organizational science also has a long tradition of learning from failure—searching for and rectifying faults in systems. Both learning from failure and advancing from the positive seem necessary. For example, Ellis, Mendel, and Nir's (2006) simulations suggest analyzing failure is an important part of task learning. Fredrickson (2009) also found that subgroups examining systems failure did better on a subsequent simulation than those that had looked at success and a control group.

Organizational Development

Organizations are continually on the lookout for practices that can improve performance. However, empirical work suggests organizational development is typically a difficult, lengthy, and time-consuming process. Nevertheless, managers—at least those in Anglo-Saxon countries such as the United States and the UK—have tended to maintain a remarkable faith in the possibility of a quick fix for their organizational ills.

Indeed, the past 50 years of organizational development have been characterized by a succession of so-called management fads, such as management by objectives, continuous improvement, quality, reengineering, the learning organization, empowerment, and knowledge management (Mintzberg, 1983; Pascale, 1990). Many of these organizational interventions derive initially not from academic research but from practices perceived to have been effective in other organizations.

One popular approach is benchmarking, which aims to compare the processes and practices of one's own organization with those in successful competitor organizations (Zairi, 1996). Sober examination after the event shows that companies lauded for good practice and exceptional performance at one point in time have not necessarily looked so rosy when examined 10 or even 5 years down the road. A classic example is the downfall of a number of the companies identified as excellent in Peters and Waterman's (1982) classic text.

Indeed, in their haste to take up the latest “good practices” and management fads, organizations can be faulted for an overly naive acceptance of the positive and a failure to appreciate that what works in one situation may not transplant to another so happily. Further, other unwanted effects may occur because the ramifications of any organizational development intervention tend to be considerable. Pascale (1999) argues that 80% of organizational change efforts fail. Nadler (1988) suggests organizational change efforts are more likely to succeed if they involve key players, get participation in the process, and build in feedback. Robertson, Roberts, and Porras's (1992) meta-analysis found that multipronged organizational change that sought to change a number of different subsystems had a better chance of success.

Perhaps the main shift in organizational practice over the past century has been the change in culture. In Anglo-Saxon countries such as the United States and the UK, the go-ahead organization seeks a culture where trust is sufficient for employees to feel able to challenge established practices and to innovate. Managers are urged to forgive mistakes and walk the talk, though reality does not always match the rhetoric. Various studies have shown that in sectors such as information technology, innovative companies that had open cultures have fared well (Jelinek & Schoonhaven, 1991). However, such cultures are not without cost, because they typically involve staff in many meetings and a good deal of confrontation.

Many organizations have gone to great lengths to try to change their culture from a more conservative to a more open one, a process that normally takes many years. The Norwegian-based Karmoy provides an example. Karmoy, which manufactures aluminum, used a gardening metaphor (which they hoped staff would easily identify with) to visualize the past, present, and desired future state of the company. A series of group meetings were held, in which they gave all staff a chance to voice their aspirations for the company. Subsequent to this intervention, the company found that health improved, absenteeism reduced, and the number of employee suggestions for organizational improvement substantially increased, all measures of an improved climate (Parker, 1990). However, in such culture change programs, middle managers often end up with less power than previously. This loss of power is not to everyone's taste and many culture change programs find they lose a portion of staff who are unable or unwilling to adapt to the new approach (Henry, 1994).

Great claims have been made for organizational culture change as a means of improving organizational performance and climate, but some high-profile culture change efforts have failed over the medium term. Legge's (1994) review questions whether the benefits of moves to more enterprising cultures have been as substantial as generally claimed.

There is some evidence that different personality types and different departments favor different organizational cultures. Ekvall (1997) found that production staff preferred a climate in which rules are clear and people work in tried and tested ways. In contrast, people in research departments tended to favor a more open, easy-going climate where staff were freer to pursue what they perceived as important.

A consequence of more participatory working practices in many organizations is that the worker is empowered to a greater degree than before. However, in some cases, the empowerment offered is a travesty of the term, as in McDonald's workers being allowed to modify the standard customer greeting.

At the other end of the spectrum, some companies have empowered their staff to the point where they self-organize and have an unusual amount of autonomy at work. Dutton, a small-scale engineering works in the United Kingdom, and Semco, a medium-sized pump-manufacturing concern in Brazil, are two examples. Dutton's self-managed teams deal directly with the customer, handle design and costs, and set delivery dates (Lewis & Lytton, 1995). In short, these organizations abolish most of the red tape traditionally associated with organizations and treat their staff like adults able to organize their own lives.

Semco employees set their own hours, get their own parts, have control of their expenses, and in some cases decide on their share of the profits. The company has abolished many standard corporate departments such as quality and personnel, and allows staff to hire employees for their area directly. They also have a policy of limiting all memos to one page. Semco uses upward appraisal where staff use a simple satisfaction measure to appraise their bosses every 6 months (Semler, 1994). Often such companies also practice open accounting where detailed information about company finances is available to employees.

Staff who work in these firms become very committed to the company, very few if any abuses of the system are reported, and levels of satisfaction and performance are high (Semler, 1994; www.semco.com). However, self-organizing companies tend to be small or medium. Such practices are more difficult to incorporate in large multinationals, where a need for coordination across departments usually necessitates some red tape.

In addition, though participatory working practices accord with individualistic Western values, we can question to what extent such practices are suited to more hierarchical cultures such as those found in South India and Malaysia and much of Africa, where high power-distance between subordinates and superiors is the norm (Hofstede, 1984).

As the boundaries between companies become more fluid, interorganizational interventions become more common, for example, partnerships across the supply chain. Typically, large private companies form long-term relationships with suppliers rather than accepting the lowest tender each year. This enables the suppliers to build a relationship with the companies they are supplying. Nissan sends engineers to help underperforming suppliers improve, rather than changing suppliers, for example. Though these partnership networks give greater prominence to trust and a committed relationship than solely to cost, they perform well compared to traditional tendering systems when all costs are taken into account (Henry et al., 2002).

There is also the question of how to measure cultural improvement in an organization over time. Most organizations rely on employees subjective ratings of how satisfied they are and how they view the organization, its prospects and management or performance, and efficiency measures such as the number of new products and time and cost of production. Karmoy used an interesting index based on the number of staff suggestions, level of absenteeism, and accident rate (Henry, 2001a).

Conclusion

Most people spend much of their life at work in organizations, and a major source of well-being typically comes from work. Sustaining a sense of the good life can sometimes be more difficult in large organizations than small ones, but certain participatory organizational practices can help.

The increase in participation, moves toward more open cultures, and emphasis placed on personal development suggest that organizations have become more positive places over the past 30 years. However, satisfaction measures suggest that this is not universally so. It is thought that increasing workloads, increasing stress, the increased policing inherent in many quality-control and surveillance schemes, and uncertainty over future employment opportunities plus less faith in fair treatment may account for this decline in satisfaction, despite the enhanced autonomy and control afforded through practices such as empowerment and multidisciplinary teamwork.

In terms of much of their day-to-day practice, many mainstream organizations seem to operate from a negative orientation, that is, bureaucratic control procedures, a problem-solving orientation, and a competency framework for development. However, much personal, group, and organizational development has been framed more positively with the accent on success, good practice, intrinsic motivation, recognition, learning from mistakes, the need for a vision, empowerment, and respectful relations. Positive approaches based on strengths and appreciation have caught on in executive coaching and professional development. Positive organizational scholarship and positive organizational behavior are acting as stimuli to further work on positive approaches and flourishing in organizations.

Some management training adopts a meta-perspective that recognizes that strengths and weaknesses are inherent in any style or situation, even apparently positive ones. Positive organizations encourage respectful and supportive relationships and a positive approach to learning about self and others; these approaches can lead to enhanced respect, acceptance, and tolerance for others, as well as satisfaction at work, and they afford a basis for wise organization.

Summary Points

• Work is a major source of well-being, providing social engagement, time structure, identity, and in many cases meaning, with the employed generally rating themselves as happier than the unemployed.
• Happiness at work is affected by a nonlinear combination of personal and environmental factors, including disposition.
• Attempts to enhance happiness at work include job enhancement, aligning intrinsic motivation, flexible working conditions, increasing social opportunities, positive recognition, and increased participation.
• There has been a long-term trend to more participatory and transparent working practices, which might be expected to make work-based well-being more likely.
• Job satisfaction levels are declining in some Western countries, a factor largely attributed to work intensification, perceived loss of job security and prospects, and increased surveillance.
• There is evidence that psychological capital (hope, optimism resilience, efficacy) aids happiness and work performance and that openness and forgiveness aid organizational creativity.
• Both positive (e.g., solutions focused approaches) and negative approaches (e.g., learning from failure) seem necessary for work-based learning.
• Appreciative and strengths-based interventions are increasingly influential approaches in organizations.

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