The not-so-new fad in HR is the pursuit of happy employees. Let me explain. It is not that companies look, during the recruitment process, for those people who are happy in order to employ them, but rather that they look for (pretend) that their employees are happy employees when they are already in the team. It sounds nice, even noble and generous, but… is it companies’ mission to make their employees happy employees? I’m afraid that the nice, even the noble and generous, can be a beautifully paved road to error.
Why is it wrong to look for happy employees?
Simply because happiness is an individual matter that should be excluded from the responsibility of companies. The problem, which has its philosophical complexity, is that many companies embed this objective in their corporate culture as if the happiness of their employees were something that the organization can measure, enhance and manage. Their mistake probably lies in the fact that companies that set out to make their employees happy are confusing happiness with mental health in the workplace.
Calling them happy employees instead of healthy employees
Is happiness the same as psychological well-being? I don’t think so. Is it right, then, to actively claim that employees are happy, i.e. that their work provides them with happiness? I don’t think so. Wouldn’t it be more correct to speak of satisfied, comfortable, or motivated employees, and of companies that care about their psychological well-being while rejoicing that, in some cases, this also translates into happiness due to work? I think so.
After all, my company does not owe me my happiness, just as it is not obliged to provide me with my personal fulfillment, it already does enough to treat me as I deserve to be treated while I am part of it! It is better to leave it to me to be happy and to create the right conditions so that my mental health does not suffer but is the best possible in what is in its control.
However, the trend of the impacting and the most beautiful can still cause a lot of confusion when we talk – on a serious level, not on the level of the Chief Happiness Officer – about employees’ psychological health.
For the sake of this fashion, which is reflected in the workplace as in all other aspects of society, we are witnessing the cheapening of the concept of happiness through the misuse of the word happiness. Many companies now want to do more than just protect the mental health of their employees: they want to do no less than objectively identify the factors that could contribute to their happiness in order to make them happy (or make them believe they are happy) and turn the organization into a utopia in the making.
“Happiness”
I believe that happiness is not the same as mental health and that, therefore, happy employees are not the same as healthy employees.
Perhaps we can consider the use of the word happiness in relation to our experience as employees but in a colloquial sense, associating it with being content, satisfied, or perhaps, in an occasional way, exultant with an achievement or good corporate news.
We can allow ourselves this flexibility in the use of the word happiness if we assume that, in reality, practically all words are polysemic, that is, they admit more than one meaning or nuances within the same meaning. However, this should not lead us to the pretension of talking about happiness in a serious sense, as part of the experience that the company should provide us with or to which we should aspire as employees.
Why? Because in the serious sense, happiness is something else: something we can experience as employees (why else would we talk about professional fulfillment?) but which is completely outside the responsibility of companies, given its complexity and abstraction.
Happiness: a private affair
It is important to make it clear that happiness is an individual matter, as it concerns the existential quest of each employee as a person, not just as an employee. Meanwhile, physical and psychological health is the responsibility of the organization we work for.
In other words: the company does not owe me happiness (that is my business) but it does owe me the necessary conditions so that my psychological well-being is not harmed (loyalty, security, commitment, rewards, care for the working environment, providing the necessary materials, not exploiting, thanking…) but, if possible, enhanced.
In short: can our work make us happy? Yes, some people are lucky enough to work in interesting jobs that they like, that make them participate in nice, interesting or useful projects, through which they not only earn a living but also build it, during all or part of their professional career. Should the company worry about making us happy employees through our work? No, it would be better to worry about taking care of our physical and mental health and treating us as we deserve, which is something different from happiness, although it may contribute to it.
Emotional well-being for companies
At ifeel, we understand that it is not possible to take care of the company without taking care of the psychological well-being of its employees. To do so, we have an emotional well-being program for companies, designed by our team of occupational well-being psychologists with one main objective: to help companies place employee health at the center of their strategy to build their mission statement.
Thanks to this partnership, the people in charge of HR departments can receive personalized, data-driven advice on how to make good decisions in a company to get the most out of the teams they are in charge of and take better care of the psychological well-being of the people in them.
Moreover, this program offers employees a holistic mental health care service structured at different levels according to their needs. This service includes, if required, online psychological therapy with a psychologist specialized in cases like theirs. Try our program today so you can see how it could help you.
We hope you have found this post about happy employees interesting. If you want more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, simply request it and we will contact your team as soon as possible. You may also be interested in this post about mental health at work.
