Happiness

This research stream investigates what impacts happiness at work, considering that people are affected by multiple factors during their workdays.

We want to determine to what degree the characteristics of our workdays (i.e., the tasks we do, the people and environments we interact with, etc.) are affected by two main categories of factors - time varying (i.e., likely to change frequently and/or quickly) and time-invariant (i.e., stable) factors. Primarily, the focus is on the former - the aspects of our workdays that fluctuate the most. A longitudinal study is being conducted to investigate to what degree variables that fluctuate over time have an impact on how happy we feel at work.

Current & future research questions:

• can situational variables (e.g., tasks, interactions, environment) explain how people feel at work?
• can situational variables reliably predict organisational outcomes (e.g., productivity, turnover)?
• what is the relationship between stable variables (e.g., education, position in the company) and time-varying factors (e.g., tasks) when explaining happiness at work?
• are some situational variables more influential than others regarding how happy we feel at work (e.g., type of task vs who we talk to at work)?