Do ‘Time and Money’ impact our happiness ? Must employers be more concerned about workers’ happiness ?  

In most countries in the world, the issue of well-being and happiness at work has become a bottom-line imperative. As the costs of lack of mental well-being becomes the leading cause of sickness, absence, presenteeism and poor performance, employers throughout the world see this as a strategic issue rather than a ‘nice to have if you can afford it’ condition. Even at the start of the Industrial Revolution, the great social reformer John Ruskin could see the dangers of industrialisation on the health and well-being of workers when he wrote in 1851: “in order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it, they must not do too much of it, and they must have a sense of success in it”. Today, many business leaders understand the importance of employee well-being and happiness because they can see how it produces added value for their organization in terms of better employee health, less stress-related and mental ill health, sickness, absence, talent retention and increased productivity.

As Studs Terkel wrote in his acclaimed book Working in the 1970s, “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor, in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying”.

Economists throughout the world use the wrong metric when trying to determine the success of their respective economies, Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is a poor measure of a society’s success; a better measure is Gross National Well-being! And there are many countries now considering this from Bhutan to New Zealand.

As Bobby Kennedy wrote in a speech he gave months before his assassination in 1968: “Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things through our Gross National Product…Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”. We are now entering the happiness era, and may it thrive enhancing people’s health and well-being.

(Cary L. Cooper teaches Organizational Psychology and Health at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester)

Republished with correction. The Happiness Report was wrongly attributed to Kennedy School, Harvard. It has been brought out by Dr Rajesh K Pillania from MDI.