Measuring happiness at work Simon Lutterbie & Jessica Pryce-Jones Happiness at work is a mindset which enables actions to maximise performance and achieve potential. This article presents a 10-item scale for measuring happiness at work, within the context of the practitioner-focused iPPQ, and presents correlational evidence of the relationship between happiness at work and performance outcomes. The 10-item scale complements the 25-item iPPQ, providing a useful tool for measuring and increasing an organisation’s, team’s or individual’s happiness at work.
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APPINESS at work is a mindset which enables actions to maximise performance and achieve potential. It is characterised by ‘broadening behaviour’ (Frederickson, 1998) and is related to the state of working towards a goal with the belief that it will be achieved (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). Happiness at Work is a form of ‘mindset happiness’: it is relatively stable over a period of weeks to months (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon & Schkade, 2005), but also sensitive to change through environmental factors and focused interventions (Kurtz & Lyubomirsky, 2008; Seligman et al., 2005). There is widespread support for the benefits of positive mental states (Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005), and happiness at work relates to a number of positive psychology constructs. General happiness is one’s overall evaluation of the quality of their life (Diener, 2000); it provides a more global evaluation, whereas happiness at work is specifically relevant to work. Well-being is a more diffuse concept, including such elements as mental health (e.g. Ryan & Deci, 2001), although it has also been applied to the workplace (e.g. Sparks et al., 2001). Job satisfaction is a classic attempt to quantify employees’ feelings towards their work (Brief & Weiss, 2002); however, the link between job satisfaction and performance is still unclear (e.g. Judge et al., 2001). Engagement, generally defined as a feeling of maximum effort and commitment to one’s job (e.g. Kahn, 1990), is the concept most closely related to happiness at work. The Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) model describes engagement occurring when the individual has sufficient job and personal resources to meet current job demands (e.g. Bakker, 2009). We hypothesise that happiness at work represents the feeling the individual has, and can continue to develop, the necessary resources, but this prediction is still under investigation.
Measuring happiness at work The iPPQ (Edmunds et al., 2009) is a practitioner-focused measure that collects feedback on 25 specific elements relevant to happiness at work. The original items and scale were generated based on focus groups and interviews with general managers, senior leaders, and MBA students (Edmunds et al., 2009). We hypothesised that a shorter scale could be constructed from the 25 items of the iPPQ. This would provide a general measure of happiness at work to complement the iPPQ’s ability to identify specific workplace issues. Together, the short- and long-form scales combine a ‘headline’ score for happiness at work with the specific recommendations for improving an organisation’s, team’s or individual’s happiness at work. Assessment & Development Matters Vol. 5 No. 2 Summer 2013
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Method Participants N=32,606 responded to an online questionnaire. The sample population was genderbalanced (50.8 per cent female, 47.1 per cent male); geographically diverse (>90 nationalities, 80 countries of residence represented); and primarily of working age (92.3 per cent aged 20–60 years). Measures and analysis Participants responded to an online questionnaire consisting of basic demographic information, the 25-item iPPQ, and self-report outcome measures for preliminary analysis. A principal components analysis was conducted to identify which items loaded most strongly onto the core component of happiness at work. Correlational analyses were then conducted to test the relationship between happiness at work and performance indicators. Table 1: PCA loadings for the 25 iPPQ items on central happiness at work component. Items selected for 10-item scale are italicised. Item
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Would you recommend working at your organisation to a friend? How much do you wish to leave your current job?* Do you feel you are doing something worthwhile? Do you trust the vision of your organisation’s leaders? How motivated do you feel while at work? How much do you like your job? Can you raise issues that are important to you? How well does your job fit with your initial expectations of it? Do you lack interest in your work?* How fair is the culture at work? Do you agree that you often feel a strong burst of positive emotion at work? How much do you feel your work has a positive impact on the world? Do you appreciate the values that your organisation stands for? How much do you feel you are living up to your potential? Do you agree that your stakeholders give you positive feedback? Are your views ignored?* How much does your boss respect you? Do you have a sense of getting things done at work? How much in control do you feel over your day-to-day activities? How much do you like your colleagues? How much do your colleagues respect you? How efficiently are you able to get things done at work? How insecure do you feel in your current job? How effective do you think you are at your job?* Are you resilient when it comes to coping with difficult times? 14
0.287 -0.283 0.250 0.247 0.234 0.234 0.219 0.218 -0.218 0.213 0.213 0.205 0.200 0.200 0.197 -0.197 0.185 0.182 0.177 0.132 0.118 0.113 -0.112 0.103 0.080
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Results Table 1 displays component loadings for all 25 items, highlighting in italics the 10 items selected for the core scale. The 10-item happiness at work scale displayed good internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .92), and removing any single item did not improve the scale’s reliability. Happiness at work was significantly correlated with respondents’ self-reported percentage of time spent ‘on task’, r(26146) = .47, p < .0001; percentage of time feeling ‘energized’, r(25661) = .67, p < .0001; and percentage time feeling ‘engaged’, r(25697) = .64, p < .0001. While only a preliminary analysis based on self-report data, these correlations support a positive relationship between Happiness at Work and work-relevant performance indicators.
Discussion Happiness at work is a mindset which enables actions to maximise performance and achieve potential. The iPPQ (Edmunds et al., 2009) includes 25-items focusing on specific work elements relevant to happiness at work, and a 10-item ‘headline’ score. Happiness at work is positively correlated with the percentage of time respondents report being ‘on task’ and feeling energised and engaged at work. The analysis presented in this article represents an important step towards a comprehensive model for measuring and building happiness at work. The current analysis relies on self-report data; future analysis will test a predictive relationship between Happiness at Work and externally measured worker and business performance indicators. Future research will also verify the efficacy of focused interventions which have been developed to build happiness at work based on the specific work elements covered within the 25-item iPPQ.
The authors
Jessica Pryce-Jones is CEO of iOpener Ltd and Dr Simon Lutterbie is head of research.
Conflict of interest The research was funded and conducted by iOpener Ltd.
References Bakker, A.B. (2009). Building engagement in the workplace. In R.J. Burke & C.L. Cooper (Eds.), The peak performing organization, pp.50–72. Oxon: Routledge. Brief, A.P. & Weiss, H.M. (2002). Organizational behavior: Affect in the workplace, Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 279–307. Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American Psychologist, 55, 34–43. Edmunds, L., Lindsay, J. & Pryce-Jones, J. (2009). The process of change in a charity with challenge. Poster presented at the 2nd Applied Positive Psychology Conference, Warwick, UK. Fredrickson, B.L. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2, 300–319. Judge, T.A., Thoreson, C.J., Bono, J.E. & Patton,G.K. (2001). The job satisfaction – job performance relationship: A qualitative and quantitative review. Psychological Bulletin, 3, 376–407.
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Kahn, W.A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33, 392–724. Kurtz, J.M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Towards a durable happiness. In S.L. Lopez (Ed.), Positive psychology: Pursuing human flourishing. Westport, CT: Praeger. Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803–855. Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K.M. & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111–131. Ryan, M.R. & Deci, E.L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of the research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166. Seligman, M.E.P., Steen, T.A., Park,N. & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410–421. Sheldon, K.M. & Elliot, A.J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 482–497. Sparks, K., Faragher, B. & Cooper, C.L. (2001). Well-being and occupational health in the 21st century workplace. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Pscyhology, 74, 489–509.
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