Happiness on the Job in Britain
From the Times of London:
C&G’s annual Happiness Index suggests that hairdressers, beauticians and cooks or chefs are among the happiest people in Britain, while estate agents, civil servants and architects — who invariably earn more and who enjoy the cachet of being among the professional classes — are often the least content.
No word on policy analysts.
While money, status and job titles may initially quicken the pulse rate, long-term contentment at work comes from enjoying autonomy in what we do, good career progression and, in many cases, helping others through our work.
I am increasingly convinced that a sense of unfolding, growth, and progress is very important — the feeling that you’re getting better and going somewhere. I’d like to see a study that finds a way to measure something like an economy’s oppenness to advancement. This could be promotions within the firm, upward moves from switching into a higher responsibility job in a different firm, upward moves from starting a new business doing what you were doing before, but at a higher level, etc. My guess would be that the general demand for labor, and the flexibility of the labor market (ability to hire and fire, level of burden from labor regulation, etc.), would predict the pace of this kind of upward career mobility. And that, finally, economies with relatively rapid upward career mobility will have happier workers, other things equal.
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I’m all for more opportunity and career mobility, and suspect that they would be good indicators of worker happiness. But I’m not sure that I would agree with your reasoning. A “sense of progress” or “getting somewhere” doesn’t really account for the beauticians and cooks being at the top of the Happiness Index. Things like autonomy, beauty/creativity and contribution to others are probably more significant. That said, the metric may still work because people will be more likely to find what they’re looking for due to more choice and more competition for labor.
where would they ADVANCE to? It seems that lateral (horizontal) movement into another innate facet of being a human being in some balanced manner would be much more feasible. To assume economic advancement and progress (in an economic sense) gets jammed up almost immedicately because there are too many players fighting for too few progressively higher jobs and thus ONLY the economically ADVANTAGED (meaning they play the money game very well) have an opportunity to be happy.
Were the cooks and beauticians moving through their postions or were they STUCK in them?
I tend to agree with you that having that feeling of getting somewhere better, progressing to something better is a large part of this happiness thing, but this progress relies on many more aspects of being a human (physical, mental, social, spiritual, cultural, psychological, etc )than simply work and its monetary rewards. All of these areas and many more can be progressed through and mastered. The secret is doing so in a balanced manner so that the individual doesn’t fall over, so to speak, from over use of one or two of her innate human potentials while ignoring others that are NECESSARY for continued progression. (I’m thinking about the powerful managers that have heart attacks at 50 years old and many other stereotypes of ill-balanced PROGRESSION(?). They would, I feel, score high on happiness, but the PRICE!!!
Is someone that is ectatic for 3 years, like a rock and roll singer, but drops dead at 25 a reasonable human? I don’t know? jean