Category Archives: Science

A $70k minimum wage: a real-life experiment in happiness economics

20 April 2015 22:01 ,

Money: it proves to be the central topic for happiness researchers worldwide. Only last week I wondered how money affects me. This week, coverage from various international newspapers on a great new real-life experiment left me no choice but to discuss it again.

A $70k minimum wage, based on scientific advice

Dan Price, CEO of the Seatlle-based Gravity Payments decided to raise the salary of all his staff to a minimum of $70,000. He made his decision after reading an academic article by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton. Analysing data on salaries and well-being within a Gallup poll under 450,000 US citizens, Kahneman and Deaton found that well-being does not raise anymore after a salary of around $75,000. As they acknowledge their study does not settle the eternal question whether money buys happiness. Indeed, an enormous number of studies has been dedicated to the topic, and findings are inconclusive. For instance, a UK study based on figures for multiple countries from the World Value Survey I cited in another post reported a figure already of $30,000 as a cut-off point.

How do Kahneman and Deaton come to the figure of $75,000? Whilst the article is very readworthy, let me give you a quick overview. They distill four indicators out of the Gallup data. Firstly, ‘positive affect’ measures how often people report happiness, enjoyment, and smiling and laughter; people were asked whether they experienced these (and other) emotions the day before their interview. Secondly, ‘not blue’ uses a similar technique, but regards the number of people who did not experience sadness and worry. Thirdly, ‘stress-free’ measures one question: whether the interview person experienced stress the day before. Finally, Kahneman and Deaton extracted income data from the survey.

The table summarises the findings: all three factors increase when income increases. The factor ‘not blue’ shows the largest difference, indicating that sadness and worry are more strongly associated with lower incomes. But what the three characteristics have in common is that all of them at a certain point – at around $75,000 – increase only very marginally or even degree. An ideal point, possibly.

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The graph comes from the publication (Kahneman and Deaton 2010)

 

A real-life experiment 

Price’s decision was not only a great and happy surprise for the half of his staff who earned less than $70,000, but also is a very interesting social experiment. In this almost communist version of capitalism, the impact on the firm is likely to be massive. In the New York Times article, people with a current salary in the $40,000s tell being concerned about rent increases and health bills. An increase should alleviate such worries, making an overall contribution to happiness.

One of the most curious about the impact on the internal dynamics and job satisfaction. According to the article, the firm has 120 staff, with an average salary of $48.000. 70 staff see their salary increase; 30 people will have their salaries double. That also means that the differences between staff with different seniority and competences disappears.

How will this impact motivation? There can be two possible directions. On the one hand, people may be less motivated to work harder. They are less incentivised to do so as they already have the guarantee of a raise. And a cynic could argue that there might be some frustration amongst those employees who are in the top bracket.

On the other hand, the effects could be positive. Giving this raise is likely to increase overall well-being, and originates from the work environment, it would be expected to result in higher levels of happiness at work. One of the main effects, I would expect, is that the unconditional raise could increase the trust of Price’s employees, which would be hoped to be repaid via a commitment to stay at the firm and perform well in exchange for this reward. That could lead, for instance, to better staff retention and strong self-motivation.

Happiness at work is associated with a range of positive outcomes at firm level, going from lower absenteeism, less sick leave, higher productivity, and overall job performance. Beyond that, higher and more equal wages of course of societal benefits, as the new economic foundations note in a blog post.

Once the shock of the raise is over, I hope that Price is monitoring the development of happiness at work over a longer time period. It’s a great case study and it will be wonderful to see what the real effects are. It’s not only useful for all companies in the US who may want to follow the example to increase equality on the work floor and happiness at work, but also for companies outside. Maybe then one day we can establish whether there really is an optimal income for happiness.

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Money – making sense of the root of all evil

13 April 2015 21:25 ,

Money, it’s a crime 
Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say 
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a raise it’s no surprise
That they’re giving none away

Pink Floyd, Money

For a happiness blogger, money is an obvious topic to cover. In the last year and a half, I’ve written a series of posts on money and happiness.

But how does money affect me?

I hadn’t thought of that so much, until I took a workshop with Sydney Schreiber last month. Sydney’s workshop is titled Making sense of your relationship with money (see intro video here). And indeed, participating helped me reflect on how I use money and what it does for me.

This reflection started already before the workshop: as homework I had to calculate my net worth, or the value of all my (material) possessions, and my annual income. This is not an easy thing to do. When it comes to a collection of books or ties, for instance, do I count the €15 or €20 I bought a book for? Should I consider how much I could earn by selling your ties? And how does it work with gifts when I don’t know their price?

Money has a million different meanings

moneyFrom an association exercise with the group, we could observe that money means something different for everybody. Terms that were mentioned when Sydney asked us to associate went in all directions: from ‘hedonism’, ‘root of all evil’ and ‘pollution, to ‘love’ and ‘pleasure’, and from ‘happiness’ to ‘unhappiness’. For Sydney, none of these associations is right or wrong: he sees money as a blank screen, that represents whatever we project on it. It’s a valid point: money doesn’t have any meaning per se. Fundamentally, it’s merely a piece of paper that gets its meaning because we accept in exchange of books or ties.

How we see oftentimes is influenced by our background. Are we raised with American, European or Asian values? Do we value material possessions, personal creativity, or social harmony most? Do we come from a business-like or a spiritual family?

Another interesting exercise we did was writing our biography with money: when were we first aware that money existed? Had it ever created great possibilities or difficulties? An extract of the one I wrote:

I don’t have many memories about money in my childhood. I probably received around 2 guilders (€0.90) per month when I was around 6 or 7, and 5 guilders (€2.25) when I was nine. Most if not all went to my savings.

I did spend some money on ice cream or pinball machines during holidays. My family usually didn’t spend a lot of money. Saving is important in the Netherlands and we don’t like to waste money.

 

For something that influences our lives so much, we think surprisingly little about money. One of the takeaways I got is how ambivalent money is to people. It can have a positive as well as a negative influence one. And whilst this seems quite obvious intuitively, psychological research even has been able to prove the effect.

Psychological research shows: money impacts enjoyment

A study from the University of Liège, described by the Scientific American, laid out evidence that money can influence how much we enjoy certain experiences. In two experiments, the researchers tested how participants would enjoy experiences. Half of the participants were primed as they were shown a picture of money; the other half did not. Then, they were asked to do a psychological test. The results showed that the first group scored lower on enjoyment of pleasant experiences than the second.

In a second test, the same results were replicated in a different fashion. With again half of the participants given a stimulus of money (and the other group none), two groups were asked to eat a piece of chocolate. On average, the people who had seen the image of money munched away their piece of chocolate in 13 seconds less: 32 seconds for those primed with money; and 45 for those who didn’t have their experience spoiled by this exposure.

All this makes clear that money can have quite a significant influence on our experiences. Sometimes that may be problematic, other moments it may not. But in either case, it should be within our control. For that, it’s useful to have insight in your relationship to money.

For more about Sydney’s workshop, see http://freetobe.be/

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Food & happiness I: comfort and ‘ritual’ foods make you happy

23 February 2015 08:39 ,

In Italy, where I spent two years of live and left a large part of my heart, food is larger than life. Friendships are broken and wars our fought over what’s the best way to make a parmigiana, a tiramisu, or what sauce to have with a type of pasta.

When I lived in Perugia, I spent quite some time with a great American guy called Alex (we even spent two months in a double room and even had fun together). He was a great cook and very much benefitted from the lessons of our housemate Ulderico. But the main reason I’m mentioning Alex and Ulderico that it is from them that I picked up the habit to say that I’m “fat and happy” (or grasso e felice) after a particularly satisfying meal.

There’s little debate about the fact that food can make you fat. But can it make you happy? I certainly believe so. In this, I think one can distinguish between ‘comfort food’ and ‘ritual foods’, by lack of a better term.

Comfort food

‘Comfort food’ is what you eat when you’re in a bad mood and need consolation. I mostly associate this with thinks like ice cream or chocolate, or also salty fat foods as fries or crisps. Believe it or not, but there is even scientific evidence that there really is a positive effect of these kind of food products on negative emotions.

A Belgian-UK team of researchers lead by Lukas Van Oudenhove from Leuven University studied the interaction between fatty acids in the stomach and neural signals in the brain. In the small-scale experiment, the researchers induced negative emotions via exposing the participants to sad music and pictures of sad faces. Then, some of the participants’ brain activity was scanned while receiving a fatty acid infusion in their stomach – akin to eating fatty ‘comfort food’ like macaroni with cheese. Compared with a control group, the participants that had ‘eaten’ the fat food displayed a weaker emotional response to the sad images.

‘Ritual foods’

Another Dutch study I came across studied the emotions that arose in 42 students eating various sweet and salty snacks. Positive emotions as ‘satisfaction’, ‘enjoyment’ and ‘desire’ were most prevalent, whilst a range of negative emotions hardly appeared. This, and other studies, suggest there is a relation between food and happiness.

I’m inclined to believe that this partly due to what I’d call ‘ritual foods’. I’d hypothesise that the strongest effect would occur when something we eat is associated with a strong experience and that we link to a story or a ritual. Let me give some examples of ‘ritual foods’ that I enjoy myself:

  • a freshly ground coffee, put with high pressure through a good machine. Taste, smell, colour, all factors together. I get ecstatic part by the caffeine and part by the idea of the coffee. You should see me with a great brew from Aksum in Brussels or sipping freshly ground coffee from my own machine. Jokingly, I’ve even created a personality for my machine, referring to it as a ‘her’…
  • home made pesto. When I have freshly made pesto – basil leaves, oil, garlic and pine tree nuts, that’s all – it’s so enjoyable I finish until the last drop of the pot.
  • less on the ecstatic level, but on a more day-to-day enjoyment: my breakfast. Yoghurt, cereal and fruit and taking the time to enjoy it with a newspaper, magazine or TED talk at the side.

There’s a lot more to say about food and happiness. Think about the way foods are marketed as happiness-inducing or the happiness that one can find in the act of cooking. We’ll get their next week. In the mean time, you’ll have to console yourself with some comfort food.

2015-01-24 11.30.52

How much happiness does an omelette with tomatoes bring?

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The Happy Danes: why are Danes so damn happy?

2 February 2015 20:36 ,

Something is special in the state of Denmark. Believe it or not, but despite associations with the grey weather, not-so-outgoing personalities, and general boredom, Denmark tops the ranking in many international happiness surveys. Denmark is the happiest country according the World Happiness Reports of 2012 and 2013, the European Social Survey of 2008, and the Eurobarometer of 2012.

What is so special about Denmark? Why are Danes so damn happy?

The Happiness Research Institute, or Institut for Lykkeforskning as it sounds in Danish, was founded a couple of years ago just to answer that question. And the answer is simply that Denmark is good in almost everything that is related to happiness. In the words of John Helliwell (Author of the World Happiness Report, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Happiness, if there had been one):

Broadly speaking, Denmark ranks highly in all factors that support happiness

The factors behind Danes’ high happiness

What is behind this happiness? According to the Happiness Research Institute’s study on The Happy Danes, there are eight factors that contribute to Danes’ high happiness levels:

  1. Trust. People tend to trust each other – this even comes in crazy forms: I’ve been told that in Denmark it’s completely normal to leave your baby stroller (baby included) outside the supermarket during groceries or at a bar when you get a coffee.
  2. Security. The welfare state helps. Even if you’re poor, or unemployed for a time, the state takes care of you. Comparatively, Danish poor have a high level of well-being.
  3. Wealth. High prosperity helps!
  4. Freedom. And personal freedom, too.
  5. Work. And on top of that, a healthy relationship to work! High levels of autonomy and job quality – that makes happiness at work?
  6. Democracy. Election turnout of over 80% – and voting is not mandatory!
  7. Civil society. Beyond a high degree of voluntary jobs, Danes also socialise more than average.
  8. Balance. A balance between work and leisure.

All in isolation, none of these factors are very special. There are countries that offer social security, that have a strong democratic culture, or where people have a good work-leisure balance. The special thing about Denmark, though, is that all these factor appear together. What is the secret?

measure-happiness-1

Image via How Stuff Works

Social security, but no happiness policy

I asked Meik Wiking, the Director of the Institute and the lead editor of The Happy Danes, whether there is an overall policy framework dedicated to the pursuit of happiness in Denmark, or whether it is just the consequence of high quality policies in the individual areas mentioned. Wiking answers:

Currently, there is no overall happiness framework (…) However, I do think that the Danish welfare state has been good at having citizen-centered policies and focusing on reducing UN-happiness: ensuring basic income, access to health care, education etc.

As the report explains, social security has contributed to the fact that the gap in happiness between rich and poor in Denmark is a lot smaller then, for instance, in the US.

Trust

Trust is the first factor that the Institute identified as contributing to happiness. That begs the question why trust is so high. Wiking points at the low level of corruption and the small size of Danish society:

One element is of course the low level of corruption. We experience that we can have trust in our system and in our society. We are treated equally and fairly according to the law. Also, I believe that the equality and the smallness of our society reduces the incentive for cheating. We all have more or less the same – and in a small society (where everybody knows each other) the penalty for cheating is higher. I know this is all very banal, but it is the best explanation I can see.

The positive emotions paradox

Danes don’t have a reputation for being the most cheerful people. And indeed, they score lower on ‘positive affect’ (or short term, intense, positive emotions) then for instance some Mediterranean or Latin American countries. But the scores are higher for overall quality of life, where happiness measurements are based on longer term and more evaluative judgements about life as a whole. Isn’t this paradoxical?

I do believe we should strive for having high levels on both the evaluative and the affective dimension in every country. Life is made up of moments and the two dimensions are linked. However, I am not sure we should call it a paradox that one country scores low in one and high in another. I think it is just evidence that we need a more nuanced language – and understanding – to be able to talk about, study and improve quality of life.

Thus, Danes are a happy people, even though positive emotions are lower than in some other countries. In the end, it simply means that there is a lot more to know about happiness. Even in Denmark, the Happiness Research Institute won’t be out of work.

Kartofler

One example of Danish trust: unmanned stands with potatoes, where you can take them freely and supposed to leave the money behind. Image courtesy of Happiness Research Institute

Posted in: happy countries, science, state/policy , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Celebrate Blue Monday

19 January 2015 23:50 ,

garfield_83_centerFeeling down today? Suffering from the grey weather and the cold?

You are not alone: today is Blue Monday. According to calculations, it is the most depressing day of the year. Christmas and New Year’s are a far away. Your presents already have found an anonymous place in between all your other material possessions, but you’re still on a low budget to compensate for your Christmas spending spree. And rather then thinking of good moments together, it’s the slight expansion of your waste-line that reminds you most of the holidays. The only thing you are looking forward to is Valentine’s Day, an awful commercial holiday, especially if you aren’t seeing anybody at the moment. And to make things worse, the first cracks are beginning to show in your New Year’s Resolution – maybe next year is the best time to work on the better you…

You recognise all this? Then you are likely to be a victim of the Blue Monday. Today, like every grey Monday in mid-to-late January, allegedly is ‘the most depressing day of the year’.

Except that it is not. Blue Monday is a phenomenon grounded in some reality – a grey January Monday isn’t likely to bring us the most fulfillment – but it’s not based on any serious science. According to the bogus formula, the bluest Monday was determined as such:

\frac{[W + D-d] T^Q}{M N_a}

where W=weather, D=debt, d=monthly salary, T=time since Christmas, Q=time since failing our new year’s resolutions, M=low motivational levels, and Na=the feeling of a need to take action. How a factor like ‘weather’ is determined is completely left aside. And the same accounts for the other elements of the formula. None of them are grounded in science. And actually, it’s Wednesday, not Monday which is the saddest day of the week.

Blue Monday has been devised by marketeers to sell holidays. But in a way, there is also a positive message. Marking a negative day can be helpful in our process to deal with negative emotions. Light needs darkness. Positive emotions, to some extent, exist only next to negative ones. Blue Monday offers us an opportunity to be melancholic, to dwell in misery for a day.

Or even better, being aware of the day can motivate and inspire us not to be miserable. It can motivate us to seek the company of others, to host dinners, to invite friends for a drink, as I did yesterday at my own ‘anti-Blue Monday’ party. Fight negative stimuli with positive experiences.

Celebrate Blue Monday – that is my advice!

monday1

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The power of negative emotions – and two other lessons of the Foro Bienestar

3 December 2014 20:55 ,

I just came back from two weeks in Mexico. During these weeks, I fled the Brussels grey, rain and cold to replace it by the occasional Mexico City grey, the jungle rain, and Pacific coast warmth. Moreover, I spent a couple of days at the Foro Bienestar (International Forum of Well-Being and Development) in Guadalajara, where I was invited to speak. In the next two weeks, I’ll offer some thoughts about my own presentation on happiness and public policy and about the question ‘why are Mexicans so happy’ that was the leitmotiv of the conference. However, today I wanted to share some insights about the main points that I took home from the conference. Are you ready? Here we go!

Don’t forget the power of negative emotions

IMG_1937

Speaking of negative emotions: this slide by Stefano Bartolini (University of Siena) shows the problem of social comparisons and happiness very well.

Most of the speakers were academics and the good thing about academics, contrary to some happiness consultants, is that they don’t allow themselves to be carried away by their enthusiasm so much that they forget that being happy all the time is not possible and not desirable. Negative emotions are a necessary counterweight to positive ones. In a simple metaphor: feelings are a mountainous landscape. Without the valleys of anger, frustrations and anxiety, the happy peaks of joy, tranquility and exaltation would not be happy peaks but part of a plain.

Robert Biswas-Diener, often labelled as a positive psychologist, brought this forward most prominently. Answering his own question ‘how happy should an individual be?’, he suggested that the ideal rate of positive and negative emotions might be positive 80% of the time and 20% negative of the time. Being happy all the time does not do justice to real and important feelings as guilt, grief and anger. For instance, as he also discusses in his book ‘The Upside of your Dark Side‘, guilt can motivate us to work harder and accomplish more than we ever could do if we’d be simply content with everything.

Measuring happiness is very, very simple and very, very, complex

A large part of the conference was dedicated to one simple question: how do you measure happiness? It is clear that there are many ways to do so: the World Happiness Database at the Erasmus University Rotterdam knows 963 different methodologies, said Jan Ott.

But professor John Helliwell, one of the authors of the UN World Happiness Report, explained these can be summarised in a couple of simple ways. One way is to ask people how happy they are in a specific moment. This can be happiness in the ‘now’, to grasp a person’s feelings most accurately, or a moment like ‘yesterday’ or even longer ago, to prevent that events limited in time have a major influence. Such a question can be answered very quickly, without a lot of thinking. A second way is to ask a more reflective question, asking how satisfied you are with your life as a whole. Questions asking about positive or negative emotions typically give more random and diverse answers.

The debate is open on happiness as a policy objective

Picture from the opening session. Source: La Jornada de Jalisco.

Picture from the opening session. Source: La Jornada de Jalisco.

In my opinion, it should be obvious that governments would aim to increase quality of life and well-being – happiness if you want – especially where incomes increase and poverty reduces. Still, using insights about happiness and well-being in public policy is quite scarce: another research to welcome that Jalisco, the region where Guadalajara is located, is facing the challenge. Meik Wiking, from the Danish Happiness Research Institute, identified that taking happiness as a political goal is a trend. But there is also a counter-trend: skepticism about government efforts to formulate happiness policy objectives.

Professor Bruno Frey strongly advanced the argument that with happiness as a policy objective, there would be major incentives to governments to manipulate data, for instance by excluding people with lower happiness and by  falsification of indicators. In a high-level debate – the Tyson vs Ali of  happiness researchers – he was taken on by professor Helliwell, who thought these risks could be reduced as methodologies will be tweaked over time and that manipulation could be constrained in a democratic society.

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Crush your comfort zone and make the magic happen

10 November 2014 19:46 ,

Go outside your comfort zone: that is where the magic happens

Have you ever been at a conference with a great speaker that you admire, dying to pose a question important to you? But maybe you were not sure how the audience would react, or you thought that the speaker could think you were stupid. Or you hesitated in phrasing the question, and whilst you were wondering what to say, all the questions rounds were closed. Too late. Opportunity gone…

One of the challenges that we all face as human beings is to exit our comfort zones. And yes, asking questions in conferences is not the most comfortable thing to do. We feel nice and cosy to spend time in the places we know, with people we know, and a conference isn’t necessarily one of these places. But to really have unforgettable experiences, we need to leave our comfort zones and discover the world.

Image found on Reallifecoaching.net

Image found on Reallifecoaching.net

 

Easier said then done. How do you leave your comfort zone?

Well, you don’t leave it. You crush it. Preferably by laying down on the street for thirty seconds. At least, that is the solution from Till Gross (see talk below). With a large dose of enthusiasm and flair, and based on scientific insights, he explains how laying on the street has helped him to get out of his own comfort zone and given him the self-confidence to try scary things. Think of speaking to a girl or approaching top experts in his field, psychology.

The message is simple: we all are afraid to step out of our comfort zone. But if we just start something exciting and new, we make the magic happen. And if we do it over and over again, at some point it will become normal. The example of asking a question at a conference is not a random one. I’ve tried I myself. In Brussels, one gets to attend a fair number of conferences. Initially, I would never speak. But at some point, I realised that I had to change that, and as a general rule, I told myself that I’d always ask a question if a could come up with a smart one. In the beginning it was difficult, but it quickly became a habit – and it still is. That doesn’t mean I always get an answer, or that they are always smart questions, but at least the barrier is removed.

But Till’s message is even broader than that. Crushing your comfort zone doesn’t only help you to experience new things and grow self-confidence. It also helps you to be happier. I absolutely believe is right in that. Often, unhappiness results from comparing ourselves with others, and having the feeling that we are inferior. When you are physically down on the street for 30 seconds, you start a process of not caring about what other people think. By doing so, you do not only remove a barrier to self-confidence, but also a barrier to happiness.

Laying down on the street doesn’t only crush your comfort zone. It can also make you happy.

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Happiness at work (II) – for your boss

29 September 2014 14:24 ,

Last week I spoke about happiness and the benefits it has for you. We aspire for happiness in so many areas of our life – family, friends, love, our sport of passion – but often work and happiness are seen as incompatible. I hope that my piece may have challenged some of your ideas.

Since the emergence of their discipline, organizational psychologists have spent decades to research the link between job satisfaction (or happiness at work) and job performance. Though initial research suggested a surprisingly weak correlation, more recent studies found a solid link, especially for jobs with more complex tasks: the happier you are, the better you perform.

There is no such thing as a free lunch

Many companies are also seeing to start that happiness policies are a worthwhile goal to pursue for them. They may offer free lunch, flexible working hours or other benefits to reward staff and show their appreciation. But the saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch also applies here: they have clear benefits for the employer.

As I mentioned last week, shoe retailer Zappos had made the happiness of their employees and customers a key priority, with great success. But there are other examples, like software firm Atlassian, where engineers have creation days to solve problems together in a team. Or places like Google or Facebook, where working conditions are shaped to allow for autonomy and creativity and are part of the mix to keep talent in.

Happier employee, a better company

Happiness at work is correlated with higher staff retention, less sick days, less accidents on the work floor, and better productivity and customer satisfaction. All good, one would say: happiness at work is good for individual employees and for their bosses and HR departments.

From the perspective of management, however, the argument might be different. Subscribing to the notion of neoliberal economist Milton Friedman, one could argue that policies to raise the happiness of employees are pursued at the detriment of the shareholder, and that it means that simply too much is being spent on employees.

Happiness, a good business case

Finance professor Alex Edmans had though that Friedman-adepts would be wrong. In a paper, he analysed the relation between happiness at work and subsequent profits on stock exchanges. (I can’t cover all methodological details here, but he measures happiness at work by a proxy: inclusion on the “Best Companies to Work” list. His research concluded that after companies reached high levels of happiness at work, their future (longer-term) stock market profits are about 2.3%-3.8% higher than other firms. Whatever Friedman thinks, happiness at work is a good business case.

But in the end, happiness at work is not for the shareholder. It is for the employee – each of us. I absolutely believe that there are ways for us to make ourselves happier in our jobs. A large part of our appreciation depends on motivation and perception. In many organisations, there is some degree of autonomy, and some possibilities to steer a position in a certain direction.

Happiness advice

If that fails, you might have another way to reduce boredom and stimulate inspiration. Try to convince your boss to hire happiness advisors like Nic Marks. Marks, of Happiness Works, thinks that happiness is a serious business: if happiness is associated with so many positive outcomes, employers would be stupid not to invest in it. A happier employee is a happier employee, which is great in itself, but also a better company. Happiness at work is not rocket science. It starts with asking people what makes them happy, what frustrates them, what keeps them going. And when you do that for your team, you can strengthen the positive points and tackle the weak ones – in the same way as a good manager would do with any problem in the office.

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Happiness at work (I) – for you!

22 September 2014 21:26 ,

100,000 hours. 6,000,000 minutes. 360,000,000 seconds. That is roughly the time of our life that we spend at work. And research shows, that work is one of the places where we are least happy: only commuting is worse. And people prefer to be in company of others (friends, relatives, customers) over being alone, with only one exception: people are rather alone, than with their boss.

But should it really be like this? What if we were happy for all those 100,000 hours?

Today and next week, I would like to talk about happiness at work. Today, I’ll talk about your personal happiness at the work floor. And next week, I’ll speak about the implications of higher happiness levels for companies.

A potential source of happiness

Image: Happyologist

Image: Happyologist

Not many people think of work as a potential source of happiness. In this conception, work and private life are two closely separated areas. In our private life, we go for drinks with friends, lay as couch potatoes watching TV and travel to Southern France. Our job is separate part of our lives, where we earn the money needed to pays those drinks, couches and TVs, and trips.

But a stimulating job can be a source of flow, of pride, and of happiness. Recently, more and more companies are taking up the challenge. One of the inspirations was American shoe retailer Zappos. For Zappos, happiness is a part of the firm identity. Founder Tony Hsieh wanted to be the retailer with the highest customer satisfaction. To do so, he believed he had to reach a high level of job satisfaction for his employees. That means many fun events and freedom on the job, and HR policies that are shaped by a Chief Happiness Officer. You can find it cheesy, but it seems that it works.

A happy employee is a happy partner

What you are experiencing at work, doesn’t only matter those eight (or nine) hours behind you desk. People typically take their emotional state from work home. A study found a link between work engagement and vigor of an employee at the end of their working day and their happiness level before going to sleep. And not only their own happiness: the effect even crossed over to their partner. The happier an employee, the higher the happiness level of their partner on the same day!

How can I increase my happiness?

You might be wondering: how can I increase my happiness at work? Honestly: I don’t know. You are the only master of your happiness. You might have some intuitive ideas how you could find happiness in the work place. That’s probably where I would start. But let me give you a hint where the answer could be.

During my Commission traineeship almost three years ago, I had a time when I was wondering about my career: where would I end up? What would I do? How would I know it would be right place for me? At one of the career-building events, the speaker referred to a TED speaker Dan Pink. His case is that as industrial times are over, post-modern jobs require a new set of skills. Creativity and flexibility become a lot more important than those during the time a worker followed orders and worked along an assembly line.

Autonomy, mastery and purpose

In this new era, what motivates us to work? Three factors, argues Dan Pink: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy: freedom in how tackle your challenges. Mastery: getting better and better. Purpose: doing something with a bigger meaning. I think he is right. And when I contemplate my job, and others I would be willing to do, I ask myself whether they do provide these aspects. When searching for happiness at work, aim to find a place that offers you autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

 

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The morality of the market: can everything be bought?

21 July 2014 12:48 ,

Can everything be bought?

Last week I wrote about ‘Happy Money’, written by Harvard professor Michael Norton, and concluded with him that happiness can be ‘bought’ when money is spent wisely.

Today, I want to face another question: should it be possible to buy everything with money, even if it is unjust, unfair or immoral? Another Harvard professor, philosopher Michael Sandel, has written a book pondering all facets of this question.

I bought Sandel’s book ‘What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets’ in February, shortly before travelling to my course on happiness economics at Schumacher College. His prose made me realise how evasively money has entered all domains of life and how absurd some transactions are.

Allow an ad on your forehead: $777

In his book, he dives into various weird, and sometimes even out rightly wrong, areas of capitalism:

  • Lobbyist pay homeless people to wait in line for Congress hearings in Washington  (quite sure this does not happen in Brussels): $10-20 per hour.
  • The pay a six-year-old school child in Dallas gets for reading a book: $2.
  • Compensation for offering your forehead as an advertising space for Air New Zealand: $777.
  • If you are a woman addicted to drugs, you can ‘earn’ money by agreeing to sterilisation: $300.
  • Markets crowding out social values: priceless.

Some of these are clear excesses of capitalism, whilst others are a little more subtle. In a way, money and power have always mattered. Wealthy businessmen are sponsoring the presidential campaign Obama in the hope to get rewarded with an ambassador post or a certain policy. Or they might make a donation to an Ivy League university in the hope their children will be taken on. Like it or not, but I fear it is how the world works and worked for centuries. But even if that is reality, it does go against the principle of equality we all sympathise with – unless we risk losing out ourselves.

Rent-A-Friend: $10 per hour

Still, we know that these things feel a lot better and authentic when they are deserved. In 2000, a Dutch movie ‘Rent A Friend’ came out, about an an agency that rented out ‘friends’ to people that felt lonely. Despite the feeling that friendship can’t be bought, the idea has been taken up in real life: www.rentafriend.com boasts being able to offer over 500,000 ‘friends’, starting at $10 a hour, though many will waive their fee if you take them to a concert or sports event – very generous!

Markets in life and death 

Markets should have limits, argues Sandel. And it should be us as people, citizens, consumers to pose them. One of the most fascinating chapters talks about the markets of life and death. He documents many examples where life and death are sold and bought. For instance, he speaks of ‘celebrity death pools’, where people place bets on who is most likely to die.

Death list is one of these sites (though it appears there is no money involved). ‘Hopes’ are her on a death for Prince Philip or Stephen Hawking; Fidel Castro is on for the 11th year. Castro also makes it to a list at ranker.com. Here, voters have a good hand; six names out of the top ten have died this year.

But Sandel cites even crazier and more repulsive practices: employers  take life insurances on their employees, and then cash the payout if they die prematurely. Or people trade on the terrorism futures market, which rewards people who rightly guess when and where terrorists strikes, and how many people are killed.

Bring morals back to the market

From a capitalists perspective, there is nothing wrong with this. It is a market, and people are only accountable to themselves for their transactions. But as Sandel indicates, there are too many absurd, immoral, and sometimes plain wrong things that are bought and sold. And all this should stop.

Still, I don’t think laws and regulation are not the best ways to put limits to these markets. It is a moral issue, and it is our responsibility as citizens to reflect on our decisions and follow or moral compass. The limits of markets are set by consumers and nobody else. In recent decades, we have allowed ourselves to go way too far. It’s time to bring morals back to the market.

Everything can be bought. But markets crowding out social values: priceless.

 

Little surprise: also Sandel has given a TED talk about his work.

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