“Why do you stay in a job you hate?” This is the title of one of the surveys we posted on our website, to which more than 500 people across Canada have responded. I am curious about the responses because I never understood why anyone would spend approximately 88,200 hours of their lifetime engaged in activity that brought them stress and negativity. This is the number of hours an average adult will work in their lifetime, assuming retirement at age 65. Why, then, do so many people coast through life without giving much thought to improving their happiness at work? I mean, to ignore work as a component of the good life is to essentially ignore one half of our waking lives. If you are one of these people, there is compelling research to show you why it is important to get happy at work.

Happiness leads to success

Recent studies performed by some of the top happiness researchers in the world, Sonja Lubomirsky and Ed Diener, show that happiness offers many benefits at work, including improved self-confidence and leadership, warmth, sociability, more friends, as well as higher supervisor ratings. People who are happy also have better health and longevity. They have stronger immune systems, better cardiovascular health, and they have fewer lifestyle diseases (e.g. alcoholism). This translates to fewer sick days. If that is not enough to convince you that being happy is worth the effort, another study reported that cheerful people made, on average, 30% more than their less cheerful colleagues. So how can you find greater happiness at work? Let us turn our attention to two areas: increasing positive emotions, and improving engagement and meaning.

Positive emotions at work

Positive emotions such as joy, hope, optimism, love, appreciation and gratitude, energize us in the workplace and contribute to our overall well-being. To experience positive emotions at work, you really need to put yourself in the right job and in the right work environment. You need to consider both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that shape your work experience. Often when people are in unsatisfying jobs, all they can think about is the relief they would feel by quitting and starting a new job. They often do not reflect on the factors that contributed to their dissatisfaction in the first place, nor do they explore the characteristics of a new job that will ensure their happiness.

A client recently came to me, exasperated about her current job, to discuss a prospective new job offer. When I reviewed the prospective job, I knew she was overqualified for the role and we discussed the fact that she would probably be dissatisfied soon after taking the role. I advised her to apply for another job that suited her higher abilities. She decided, instead, to take the job offer. Here is an excerpt of the e-mail I received from her six months after her transition into this role:

“Well, I have to say I made the worst decision of my life…I am sooooooooooo miserable. My boss micro manages every minute of my day. She yells at some of us…I am not allowed to answer my phone or go into the plant or answer any questions. I am going crazy.”

Time and time again, I hear similar stories from people who recently transitioned into new jobs. I also talk to a great deal of people who stay in jobs they hate because they are focused on how difficult it would be to find another job. Apparently this behavior is so common, there is a definition for it. Daniel Kahneman, psychology professor at Princeton University, refers to this as the transition rule. This is when a person focuses more on how they feel about the transition itself rather than how they are going to feel even six months down the road. Knowing this, you are well advised to look ahead one year into the future and spend the time required to determine the factors that would truly make you happy on the job. In other words, don’t just jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Engagement and meaning

Attachment and attitudes toward work are shaped by two dominant perspectives that are both important contributors to happiness at work: job characteristics and our social interactions. Job characteristics are things like skill, variety, task identity and significance, autonomy and feedback. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his ground breaking book, Flow, explains that when people are having an optimal experience at work, they are fully immersed in what they are doing and overcome by a feeling of full engagement and success in the process of the activity. A key component to facilitating flow experience is that skills match the challenge of the activity. Overly challenging work causes anxiety, while under challenging work causes boredom. Research shows that the more time one can spend in flow experiences at work, the higher their work satisfaction. Therefore, job characteristics are an important component to increasing happiness and engagement at work.

Another perspective is one offered by Amy Wrzesniewski, associate professor at Yale University. She claims that our work experience is shaped by constructive (or destructive) relationships with supervisors, co-workers and clients. Wrzesniewski argues that “the interpersonal dynamics that unfold between people at work create a powerful context in which work meanings are composed.” Thus, you should never underestimate how important our social relationships are to our satisfaction at work. This might explain the common saying, “people don’t leave jobs, they leave people.” Thus, if you are searching for greater meaning at work, your social interactions will have a big impact. The kind of people we are likely to encounter in any given job should, therefore, be an important consideration when searching for the ideal job. This includes co-workers, managers, and customers.

Further research indicates that the intrinsic value we place on work is also influenced by how we frame our work experience. According to Wrzesniewski, work is subjectively experienced by people in three distinct ways: as a job, a career, or a calling. Those who view their work as a job primarily use it as a means to an end, without getting much intrinsic value from performing the work itself. People who have career orientations are more deeply invested, but mainly for the purpose of advancement, monetary gain, prestige and power. Those with calling orientations are deeply fulfilled by their work, find meaning in the work itself, and feel their work contributes to the greater good. On the WhyDidYouGo.com website, we have another questionnaire asking people to comment on work they love. Most responders to this questionnaire speak to this notion of the work being ‘important’ and fulfilling. Other than the obvious benefits of actually enjoying work, those who consider their work a calling also claim to reap benefits even outside of work. Most people with calling orientations report higher life satisfaction, receive more satisfaction from their work than their personal time, and are likely to report good psychological health. Thus, a calling appears to have greater meaning than careers or jobs, which ultimately leads to greater well-being.

Finding the work you love can take some time and effort, but the benefits in improved success, happiness and overall life satisfaction are remarkable. What are you waiting for?

Louisa Jewell is president and co-founder of Why Did You Go, a consulting and coaching firm specializing in employee engagement and retention. Their vision is to improve happiness at work, one workplace at a time. For more information about how you can find the work you love, contact her at Louisa@whydidyougo.com.