Who's happy?

Someone who has a dozen mildly nice things happen each day is likely to be happier than somebody who has a single truly amazing thing happen.  So wear comfortable shoes, give your wife a big kiss, sneak a french fry.  ~Daniel Gilbert

Harvard Business Review cover headline, January-February 2012: The Value of Happiness:  How Employee Well-Being Drives Profits.  This cover headline is significant, let me explain. 

In three short weeks I'll hit my 100^th blog post.  Throughout the past nearly two years of weekly writing, I've not taken the opportunity to vent a little so I feel like I've earned this opportunity.  Last week while watching the national news (I'll not mention which network), they included a feature story on the IRS.  This isn't surprising given all of their recent controversy and I'm certainly not going to attempt to defend the IRS' behavior. 

During this story the reporters highlighted what they believed was gross over-spending by the IRS.  One item they chose to include on their list of over-spending was $11,000 for a "happiness expert."  I was stunned.  I guess the writers and producers didn't do any fact checking or research on happiness in the workplace before they decided to scoff at the IRS' spending for a happiness expert. 

Not only was happiness the lead story for the Jan/Feb 2012 HBR, it was the theme for the issue.  Here are just a couple of examples of actual scientific support.

In a sweeping meta-analysis of 225 academic studies, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King, and Ed Diener found that happy employees have, on average, 31% higher productivity; their sales are 37% higher; their creativity is three times higher. 

Quoting Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, "Psychologists want to understand what people feel, economists want to know what people value, and neuroscientists want to know how people's brains respond to rewards.  Having three separate disciplines all interested in a single topic has put that topic on the scientific map.  Papers on happiness are published in Science, people who study happiness win Noble prizes, and governments all over the world are rushing to figure out how to measure and increase the happiness of their citizens."

I suppose the lesson in all this could be to do some fact checking before going on the national news mocking an organization's tactics for increasing productivity.  But what I'm really trying to emphasize is that happiness matters.  Our mental and emotional health is not only important, it's critical, and organizations should be investing in happiness.  Seeing this scoffed at on the national news made me feel like we took several steps backwards when it comes to understanding organizations and the people who work within those organizations.

If that's not enough, in 1776 our forefathers had the foresight to include in the Declaration of Independence, that all men have a right to the pursuit of happiness.  Have we really lost sight of this virtue?