Happiness in the Work Place

Today I find that people are always talking about the low unemployment rates, how it’s difficult to find a job, and if they have a job, how they hate it.  There is so much focus on the negative of entering the work force that it can’t be healthy for individuals or for society.  I believe that in order for society to flourish and be happier people need to have jobs that they enjoy, if not love. 

            According to the article on Happiness, What are the sources of happiness?, one of the three basic sources of happiness is life circumstances.[1]  This includes where you are living, your job, and your wealth and health.  So if you are unhappy with your job or you don’t have one in general, is it possible to be truly happy as an individual?  Would society be able to flourish?

            One way to avoid having a job you are unhappy at would be to receive an education in a field you truly enjoy.  This way when you graduate you have learned skills based on what you love.  However this is probably the easiest part of the plan.  The hard part is actually getting the job that will make you happy.  For starters you can apply to only places and jobs that you feel you would be happiest at.  If people do not get their dream job, they will just settle for a job that will help them pay their bills which does not necessarily mean that they will be happy.

            I believe that schools should hold job fairs for students as well as public so that they can learn some of the skills or tricks that may help them land their dream job, such as how to make a resume stand out, or how to prepare for interviews.  On a more extreme level, I think that there should be a government program to help place people, who seek the help of the agency, into jobs that they would love.  I further believe that this agency should help promote the younger retirement of people.  Ideally this agency would be able to offer benefits.  Before retiring the people who are working would be able to work less hours and when they were working they would be training the new employees.[2]  This would be beneficial for the people because they would be able to have a job that they love as well as beneficial for the society people the economy could possibly improve and as a whole society could be happier.
           This program would also be beneficial to the employer.  He wouldn't have to worry about his staff being untrained, and he wouldn't have to spend any extra money to train people.  Another way that happiness in the workplace is beneficial to the employer is that when people are happy productivity increases.  In a study done by Oswalk, Proto, and Sgrio (2009) the researchers found that employees who had just watched a comedy video and then were working had a 12% greater productivity.  This goes to show you that happiness is important in the works place for the individual, the company, and the community. [5]

These suggestions would not only help people be happier, but would also help in the development of self-respect and self-esteem.  For with happiness, self-respect, and self-esteem, people need to feel needed and important.  According to Flanagan “self-respect and self-esteem depend on the confidence that one’s life has value and is worth living, and this confidence depends on one’s life’s being confirmed in certain respects by others whom one in turn esteems and whose company one enjoys.”[3]

I can personally attest to this.  Two summers ago I was working at a law office because I thought that one day I really wanted to be a lawyer.  Never in my life had I felt so underappreciated and unimportant.  I felt that my skills were not being used to their fullest potential, or at all, and I did not build relationships with any of the people that I worked with so I was miserable.  The following summer I worked three jobs all of which I loved because I was doing what made me happy and was working with people who became like my family.  I was an umpire and a scorekeeper for baseball and softball, which was great because I love those sports.  That summer I also waitressed for the first time at a bar/restaurant.  I immediately built relationships with the people who worked there as well as the costumers.  This was such a benefit to me because “relationships are the single greatest source of happiness.”[4]  Because I was happy my energy was able to transfer over to the costumers who overall had a positive experience there.

I am currently in college and working toward my degree.  I believe that if a government agency was in place to help people find jobs that people and society would be happier.  People would also have a higher sense of self-respect and self-esteem for their jobs would provide them with the sense that their life had meaning and that they are important to society.  Over all the individual and society would flourish.

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[1]  "Happiness." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 09 Nov. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/happiness/what-happiness>.

[2] “What’s the Economy for Anyway?” by John De Graaf & David K. Batker.

[3] Flanagan, O. (1993). Varieties of moral personality. (First ed., pp. 120). President and Fellows of Harvard College.

[4] "Happiness." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/happiness/helping-others>.
[5] Oswald, A.J., E. Proto, and D. Sgroi. "Happiness and Productivity." Working Paper Happiness and productivity. (2009): 1, 24. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/35451/1/522164196.pdf>.