WHAT REALLY MAKES US HAPPY AT WORK?

Sallina Jeffrey
4 min readMay 7, 2021
Everyone Deserves to be Happy at Work

What really makes us happy at work? Is it our colleagues? Our type of work? The brand we work for? The money we earn? Srikumar Roa put it simply, “happiness doesn’t come from your job, it comes from within yourself.” Sure, but I have definitely been happy within myself and absolutely dreaded going to work. Remi said, “if you want to change who you are, you have to change what you do.” Ok, now we are getting somewhere here, you will spend an average of 90,000 hours at work in your lifetime, that’s many hours being unhappy, Yikes!!

Out of everything I have researched around happiness at work, one statistic does not change. Around 75% of people are unhappy at work, which is huge. Workplaces and society need to understand that it is vital for people to be happy in their work1. If you are unhappy with what you do, you will not be the happiest version of YOU, and you will deliver mediocre work and interact with others not at a level you would if you were authentically happy. This has a huge flow-on effect on the world as a whole, and it needs to change. Sadly, many companies strive for short-term goals, putting profit before people, instead of striving for the long term approach of retaining staff and investing in them to be the best versions of themselves. The cost of staff turnover and disengagement costs companies billions of dollars each year; if they focused more on their internal culture (people), companies would experience an overall uplift in productivity. Putting profit before people often leads to a gradual change in culture, turning sometimes toxic. Sometimes, leaders are not even aware that they are creating a toxic culture, and they fail to do something so basic and hold an open conversation. Ask their people what they want, their goals, and how we can create a workplace that makes them happier? Sounds simple. It rarely happens.

This leads to people feeling unhappy in their work, and it becomes really challenging. If you are feeling unhappy at work, you’re most likely nodding as you are reading this. Sometimes unhappiness can be a slight feeling of feeling a bit off, or it can consume you to the point of near-crippling you. Every day becomes a struggle.

I created a simple check-in list for you to confirm whether it is time for a change;

1. That Sunday dread of knowing you have to go to work tomorrow.

2. You truly don’t feel passionate about what you are doing.

3. You feel the company you work for really doesn’t value you.

4. Your boss really has lost your trust; they don’t allow you to be YOU, you have to conform to the culture, and they don’t even know YOU as an individual.

5. You are becoming disengaged; everything you do, you do because you have to do it, not because you want to do it.

6. You say to yourself, “I hate my job”. Ok, that is a huge sign to start changing something.

Workplaces should be collaborative and fun.

Everyone deserves happiness, and our bodies deserve happiness. Happiness is a feeling of joy; when we feel joyful in our bodies, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin. Your body soaks up these chemicals, and you internally and externally exude happiness, and you feel good. A happy worker will make a happy workplace, and a happy workplace leads to happier customers and a happier and more prosperous world. Leaders and companies need to move the dial to focus on improving work cultures, and the profit will be long term and sustainable. People are human, and it’s a human need to be seen, heard, feel valued and have a purpose, which makes people happy at work.

If you are struggling to navigate your workplace and feeling unhappy in your daily work, engaging a Mentor can really help you unpack your challenges and roadblocks and helps you accelerate your happier career journey. Let’s move the dial to happier workplaces, better leaders and happier people overall.

“What a great place the world would be if everyone was happy at work”

Sallina Jeffrey

Founder and CEO

www.thementoringmovement.com

Roa (2010)

(Murphy, 2018)

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