Employee Psychology in the Workplace - Assignment Example

? Happiness at Work Happiness at Work Introduction In past decades when globalization was an emerging subject and competition was no so intensifying in organizations, employees’ psychology was set apart in the work places. It was considered that employees would perform independent of their psychological constructs, as they will work on the obligatory basis, on the basis of formality and to meet their objectives of growth and earning a livelihood. This consideration has gotten rejected today as employees’ psychology have a very crucial role in bringing their performance and growth altogether. In employees’ psychology, happiness has a very partial role to bring their performance and development. If an employee is happier at the workplace, his motivation to work is alive and so he is determined to achieve performance and growth altogether. Statement of the Business Problem This report is about to investigate that how happiness at work is important for an employee to achieve growth and success. The critical assessment will be made to determine the relationship between employee happiness and motivation. Furthermore, the report will understand the importance and relevance of happiness to managers at the organizational level. The objective here is to understand the theories relevant to the concept of “happiness at work”, in order to present the managerial level of recommendations about how happiness can be used to bring employee success and performance. Review of the Evidence What is Emotion? According to the contemporary literature, emotion is one psychological state of an individual derived from the individual’s mood; relationship with people and the environment the individual exists with (James, 2007). It is one intensive state of expression originated from a person’s internal feelings and perceptions. Emotions are intensive than moods but moods are the cause of intensive emotions as described by the author William James (James, 2007). According to Schewe (2011), there are six basic emotions – happiness, anger, surprise, disgust, fear and sadness (Hulsheger & Schewe, 2011). The emotions can be positive and negative depending upon how an individual copes up with his or her type of emotion state. Generally, happiness and surprise are two positive emotions as they bring positive consequences on an individual’s personality. However, fear and anger, which are considered as negative emotions, can be utilized as positive emotions if one knows how to transform such negative energies into positive ones. Happiness as One Positive Emotion Position emotions such as happiness can lead to positive consequences at the work place. Just as if an employee is in the happiness state will respond positively and optimistically to his or her leaders’ messages. Similarly, happiness leads to a positive decision making, to creative thinking and creative imagination. These are essential attributes, which consequentially appears on an employee’s personality if he or she is involved in the state of positive emotion “happiness”. According to Salovey and Mayer (2004), happiness is equivalent to positive psychological response and positive cognitions. If an employee is unhappier he might not be able to produce the positive psychological responses or cognitions, which are very important to bring employee performance at the workplace (Salovey & Mayer, 2004). The Affective Events Theory The affective events theory states that events are responsible for causing positive or negative emotions in one’s personality. At the workplace those are events, which eventually cause employees’ positive or negative emotions (Ashkanasy & Hartel, 2000, p.36). Emotions are actually psychological responses to events so if employee experiences bad events at work will bring negative emotional responses and if experiences good events, the emotional responses will automatically be positive (Basch & Fisher, 1998). (James, 2007) What is Happiness? For understanding the positive emotion of happiness, there are deliberated efforts made by philosophers, contemplators, thinkers and more significantly psychologists in the last 15 years of the period. In the contemporary assertions, happiness is an individual’s state of peace and contentment, which can also be described as a state of well-being and satisfaction (Standford Graduate School of Business, 2010). This is how happiness is a comprehensive emotion which at sometimes appear in the form of intense joy and sometimes in the form of internal pleasure among people (Martin, 2012). What causes happiness is one question that has remained significantly unanswerable as for some people it is caused by positive achievements and for others it is caused by positive experiences or events. According to Daniel Kahneman happiness is different from experienced happiness as it is something beyond from the ordinary experienced happiness (Kahneman, 2003, p.353). Seligman (2002) asserts that the level of happiness changes from person to person and it is because people have changing life experiences and they make varying efforts to achieve happiness (Seligman, 2002). However, there is a slight association of the level of happiness with achievement and progress (Standford Graduate School of Business, 2010). At times achievement and progress are two sufficient sources of happiness, just like in working organizations where employee achievements and progresses result in employee satisfaction and happiness (Jones, 2010). Happiness at Work According to the contemporary literature, happiness at work is another name given to well being at the workplace. If an employee is distinctively well-being in his or her working state or at the workplace happiness is a resulting emotional factor (Robertson & Cooper, 2011). It can be said that well-being of a person describes his or her level of happiness. If a person is a high well being in his organization, his satisfaction level and so as the happiness level will be the rising point. Distractions to well being state are actually distractions to satisfaction and happiness. So if the state of well-being is distracted like in many organizations it does, the employee will inevitably get into the state of dissatisfaction or unhappiness. So well-being is happiness and happiness is well being as described in the context of organizational behavior (Jones, 2010). In organizations, stress is one significant factor to distract the state of well-being or the state of happiness. Stress which is one silent prevailing factor in organizations often distracts employees from their well being states (Martin, 2012). However, by overcoming stress, which is the most challenging thing in competitive business organizations, the state of well-being can be resolved for employees. For overcoming stress, the need is to answer these two relevant questions that what stress is at the time of work, and how it can be overcome at the workplace (Robertson & Cooper, 2011). Stress at Work and its Influence on Happiness and Well Being When external pressures are intensive at the workplace employees adopt the condition of stress. Stress at the workplace is a burden condition when an employee is demanded than his or her working capabilities he or she is more open to catch this burden. Similarly, stress at the workplace is a built in pressure condition when resources provided to an employee are not sufficient to meet work demands or objectives (Kinder & Hughes, 2008). When stress is precise on an employee, he or she might get burned out or get exhausted from work and which eventually results in low job satisfaction and poor job performance. When performance of an employee is lowered due to unavoidable stress condition, motivation at the workplace is lost and at the same time happiness, which results from achievement and performance gets disappeared too. These are shortcomings of stress at the work place, which an employee finds when stress is unavoidable or unmanageable (Weinberg & Cooper, 2007, p.52). According to the Well-being Model, well-being at the workplace refers to the well-being of an employee’s psychological, physical, social, environmental, and economic states and conditions. If one of these states are not well being, the other four states are affected distracting the cycle of employee’s happiness and satisfaction (Carmelo, 2009). If managers focus on improving employees’ physical, social, psychological, environment and economic conditions, the state of well-being is resolved in them. Happiness is associated to well-being and well-being is pertinent to stress condition. Therefore, if managers want to improve the well-being state of employees, they have to lower the employees’ stress levels by dividing the work properly and by assigning tasks which are best suited to employees’ skills and capabilities (Jones, 2010). The Well-being model signifies that stress is the first thing, the first factor to be overcome or controlled. If stress is not controlled, the five conditions of the well-being cycle cannot be improved. This is one condition, which the well-being model sets for bringing happiness and satisfaction among employees (Hulsheger & Schewe, 2011). (Ashkanasy & Hartel, 2000) Overcoming Stress at Work to Resolve Happiness and Well Being As the contemporary literature of organizational behavior asserts, there are multiple causes of stress in the workplace. There are some causes such as noise or traffic, which are physical stressors, and some causes such as the workload, the work content or the work responsibility, which appear as mental stressors at the work place (Dewe & Cooper, 2010). If employees are able to overcome all these distinctive stressors, these distinctive causes of stress, they can effectively overcome or control their overall stress at the workplace. The responsibility lies on managers’ side that they organize special training programs in regards of stress management and stress coping techniques (Dewe & Cooper, 2010). This will guide the employees in identifying and acknowledge stress factors, enabling them to control their overall level of stress. Managers’ guidance and assistance is very important for stress management of employees. It is to be remembered that overcoming stress leads to an employee’s well-being, which further leads to employee satisfaction, motivation and happiness at the workplace. Overcoming stress is the first step for bringing happiness to employee’s life. If stress is not overcome or gets moderated, there is less chance that happiness enters in an employee’s life. Apart from all, managers can input in different ways to bring happiness in employees’ lives. They can bring opportunities for employees (environmental and economic opportunities) to improve employees’ social, physical and psychological conditions. By improving the quality of life of employees’ managers can satisfy employees to their jobs, to their work positions resulting in their ultimate happiness and satisfaction (Abbey, 2005). In organizations the resolution of happiness is associated to multiple things, in which stress is one significant factor to affect or influence the level of happiness in employees. If employees are to be made happier, they have to be exercised with techniques of stress management (Weinberg, 2010). Stress is a distraction of the well-being process and so as it is the distraction of happiness and satisfaction. To control stress, managers have to recognize stress as a significant distracter. They have to recognize it as a factor of core influence to happiness and employees’ well-being state. If stress is recognized in this way, with its essence, only then it can be overcome or controlled by managers at the work places (Weinberg, 2010). One important thing to understand is that stress influences individuals on a varying basis. One individual acquiring stress from the workload not necessarily will acquire stress from time rigidity factor, which the other individual will be acquiring stress from (Abbey, 2005). As generally there are biographic, demographic, cultural or behavioral differences prevailing between individuals so the level of stress and its influence on individuals may differ from individual to individual. This aspect has to be important for managers who are up on controlling their subordinates’ stresses, in order to invite happiness in the subordinates’ lives (Martin, 2012). In the psychological understanding, it has been noted that moderate stress levels are optimum for employees. They are optimum to bring employees’ distinctive level of performances and their distinctive level of motivations such as motivations for achievement, growth or progress. The accomplishment of these motivations lead to happiness and which eventually results in employee nourishment, growth and progress. In this way, it can be said that keeping stress at its moderate level is important and essential for employees (Abbey, 2005). The moderate stress keeps the employee on the target, on the track of their motives to achieve growth and happiness. Achievement causes growth and growth causes happiness which is a true evident fact as far as employee growth is concerned and as far as employee happiness at the workplace is concerned (Abbey, 2005). Furthermore, in organizations it has been noted that employee keeping positive attitudes and behaviors are able to perform and success. An employee cannot perform until and unless he keeps the right positive behavior and attitude with his peers, colleagues and managers (Weinberg & Cooper, 2007). These are positive attitude and behavior, which are natural sources of performance and growth for an employee at the competitive workplace. As understood earlier, when employee is able to perform only then he might be able to attain happiness at the workplace (Kinder & Hughes, 2008). How positive attitudes of employees are to be brought? This is the question, which managers need to answer at the workplace. The simple answer to this statement is that happiness is caused by job satisfaction, which comes from different sources in an organization. These sources are the reward that an employee gets in exchange of his skills and achievements, the work environment and culture in which the employee works, and the position and the power, which an employee has or will have at the time of work (Weinberg, 2010). These sources have to be established by managers in organizations, as these are powerful sources to enable employee positive attitude and behavior. When employees’ will be keeping such positive behaviors, they will be more willing to perform and enabled to work. These stimulating motivators are essential to bring employee performance and growth altogether, which successively and eventually lead to employee work time happiness and satisfaction (Abbey, 2005). Conclusions Happiness as One Positive Emotion In the light of the assessment made so far it can be understood that happiness is one positive emotion that resides in each individual’s personality. In the organizational behavior context, happiness is an emotional state caused by positive experiences. It is caused by positive events that take place in an organizational work system or work environment (Ashkanasy & Hartel, 2000). Employees are happier when they are more opened to experience positive events at the workplace. The bad events are the ultimate cause of employee dissatisfaction or employee unhappiness at the workplace (Ashkanasy & Hartel, 2000). Happiness causes lowness of mood, which is a generalizing fact that applies to employee behavior at the workplace. If employees are unhappy, they have will have a sense of lowness in their moods, which eventually will result in their low motivation and low performance altogether (Kinder & Hughes, 2008). Happiness and Wellbeing at Work Happiness and wellbeing are significantly related to each other. When an individual keeps the well being state which is based on five different well being conditions (psychological, physical, social, environmental, economic), he will be in the state of happiness. Therefore, generally well-being causes happiness and happiness causes well-being (Carmelo, 2009). Signifying this fact, if employees are well-being then they are more close to happiness and satisfaction. Their well-being condition will describe their level of happiness or satisfaction. To make employees happier, consideration has to be given to the five stages of well-being – psychological, social, physical, environmental and economic well being (James, 2007). How Employees are Happier? Employees are happier when they are provided with the best working environment. They are happier in the organizational context, if they are provided with attractive economic and environmental opportunities. Similarly, they are happier if they are in distinctions of the job and happier if they have good relationships with their leaders and managers (Weinberg, 2010). Recommendations There are different areas in which managers have to show real concern for making their subordinates and employees happy. This section will present those significant areas of employees’ happiness. The section will elaborate recommendations on how employees can be brought closer to the state of happiness. Cooperative Management The literature studied so far has told that managers have a pivotal role to play in making their subordinates happier. Managers have to come up with roles of cooperators, coordinators, and the formal friends in order to make subordinates believe in their relationships with leaders and managers (Jones, 2010). The element of trust has to be kept by managers in their relationships with subordinates, as that is what makes subordinates believe in their true potentials and skills. Definitely, managers have to appear as true leading guides to make their employees fight with the stress factor. This is how with cooperative trust management, employees' well being cycle is resolved and enabled. When well-being is there, happiness is inevitable for employees at work (Abbey, 2005). Bringing in the Intervention Strategies Training and provision of awareness are two decisive things required to make employees cope up with their stressors (Weinberg, 2010). It is the responsibility of managers that they produce effective intervention strategies to make employees manage their intensive level of stress. Stress is an ultimate destroyer of happiness and it needs to be controlled or overcome to enable the state of well-being and happiness (Jones, 2010). Improving the Work System Work system is also significant to get improved by managers. By bringing attractive wages, attractive work promotions, and effective work environment, managers can improve their places and their systems of organization. Each employee expects and dreams of a quality work system to be part of, as it is a quality work system that can bring a certain level of happiness in the employee’s life. This is one condition which employee demands for his or her happiness at the workplace. Improving the Work Culture The work culture is also very important to enable the cycle of happiness and well-being evolved at the workplace (Abbey, 2005). It is definitely an unbiased work culture, a non-politicized work culture where an employee wants to work with. The factor of biasness destroys employee’s self-motivation. It damages employee’s self-esteem and the position of self-actualization, which ultimately leads to employee dissatisfaction and unhappiness. An inspiring and encouraging work culture is needed to stimulate employee happiness and satisfaction. Genuinely encouragement is what each employee needs and inspiration is what every employee wants to see in his or her work system (Jones, 2010). If the work culture is comprised of these two positive notions “encouragement and inspiration” then the chances of employee happiness and satisfaction at the workplace are more deliberate and significant (Abbey, 2005). List of References Abbey, A., 2005. Organizational Stress. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ashkanasy, N.M. & Hartel, C.E.J., 2000. Emotions in the Workplace: Research, Theory, and Practice. Greenwood Publishing Group. Basch, J. & Fisher, C.D., 1998. Affective events - emotions matrix: a classification of work events and associated emotions. Research Report. Sydney: ePublications Bond University. Carmelo, V., 2009. Psychological Well-being and health. Contributions of positive psychology. Research Report. Madrid: APCS. Dewe, P.J. & Cooper, C.L., 2010. Coping with Work Stress: A Review and Critique. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Hulsheger, U.R. & Schewe, A.F., 2011. On the Costs and Benefits of Emotional Labor: A Meta-Analysis of Three Decades of Research. Journal of Occupational Healthy Psychology, 16(3), p.361. James, W., 2007. What Is an Emotion? Radford: Wilder Publications. Jones, J.P., 2010. Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success. Occupational Medicine, 60(7), p.578. Kahneman, D., 2003. Well-Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Kinder, A. & Hughes, R., 2008. Employee Well-being Support: A Workplace Resource. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Martin, M.W., 2012. Happiness and the Good Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robertson, I. & Cooper, P.C., 2011. Well-being: Productivity and Happiness at Work. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Salovey, P. & Mayer, J.D., 2004. Emotional Intelligence: Key Readings on the Mayer and Salovey Model. New York: NPR Inc. Seligman, M.E.P., 2002. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Simon and Schuster. Standford Graduate School of Business, 2010. The Psychology of Happiness. Case Report. Standford: Standford Graduate School of Business Standford Graduate School of Business. Weinberg, A., 2010. Organizational Stress Management: A Strategic Approach. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weinberg, A. & Cooper, C.L., 2007. Surviving the Workplace: A Guide to Emotional Well-being. London: Cengage Learning. Read More