Employee Happiness: Why We Should Care

Details

• Personal Author:
  Bruk-Lee V ; Thompson A
• Description:
  Albert Schweitzer once stated that "success is not the key to happiness, happiness is the key to success." Despite this widespread belief, employee happiness is often perceived by organizations as an insubstantial topic, irrelevant to bottom-line outcomes. Equally as problematic, past investigations have primarily utilized other positive emotion variables as a proxy for happiness, thus convoluting the relationships between happiness and work outcomes. As such, taking a scientist-practitioner approach, the present study sought to address the need to: (a) directly measure employees' happiness, (b) link employee happiness to outcomes of organizational interest, and (c) assess the impact that organizational psychosocial factors have in decreasing employee happiness levels. Therefore, by measuring employee happiness, job demands, and organizational outcomes through a two-wave full panel design, the present study provided evidence for employee happiness's ability to significantly mediate the relationship between job demands and organizational outcomes. Explicitly, a high level of job demands decreased employee happiness, which subsequently decreased employees' organizational commitment, task performance, and contextual performance, while increasing turnover intentions and counterproductive work behaviors. These results carry significant theoretical and practical implications. Future QOL (Quality of Life) and organizational research would benefit from building on the present findings and establishing a nomological net of employee happiness. Additionally, practitioners have the opportunity to utilize this evidence to demonstrate the impact that employee happiness has on organizationally-relevant outcomes and the role that organizations can have in fostering employee happiness. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Author Keywords: Happy Employees Employee Satisfaction Happiness Job Demands Job Performance Occupational Psychology Psychosocial Factors Quality Of Life Work Organization
• ISSN:
  1871-2584
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Florida ; OSHA Region 4
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  16
• Issue:
  4
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20066359
• Citation:
  Appl Res Qual Life 2021 Aug; 16(4):1419-1437
• Contact Point Address:
  Arieana Thompson, Florida International University, DM 256, 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, FL, 33199, USA
• Email:
  athom216@fiu.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2021
• Performing Organization:
  Sunshine Education and Research Center, University of South Florida
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Applied Research in Quality of Life
• End Date:
  20290630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:a584e2d4f6be0bcbe0742c9a5e69aa637dd89d93aa4485b58ff983852ca0b46291dd28d66cb40c173a286c68cd68f343182a4f13cbe523ce4a59c5ee345d3193
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/212824/cdc_212824_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 320.28 KB ]