What is happiness?

Happiness is a state of complete satisfaction characterized by its stability and durability. It's not enough to feel brief contentment to be happy. Intense joy is not happiness. Neither is fleeting pleasure. Happiness is a global state. The happy human being is fulfilled. They experience a form of plenitude. His situation is stable: it presents a balance and only an external element could modify it.

Source: Dicophilo - Dictionary of Philosophy Online - https://dicophilo.fr/definition/bonheur/

Happiness is a kind of harmonic music that envelops us provided we are in tune with who we are, what we do and what we experience.

Happiness is only noticeable in the presence of unhappiness or discomfort. Just as we only understand light when we encounter shadow. We can only appreciate happiness if we've experienced a little or a lot of unhappiness. Then we realize its value.

If during the Trente Glorieuses we lived in happiness without realizing it, the last 50 years have confronted us with multiple crises, one of the last of which was the COVID crisis. It reversed the order of things, putting happiness back as an important value in all areas of our lives including work and school.

What is happiness at work?

"Happiness at work is the set of positive feelings employees have about their organization, role and hierarchy.
The acquisition and application of new skills and knowledge, a sense of fairness, effective work processes, support from the immediate manager and a healthy organizational culture are all factors that promote happiness at work, and therefore employee motivation and commitment.
Employees who feel valued and have a sense of belonging are not only more productive, they're also the best ambassadors for your brand image.

9 strategies to make your employees happier

1. Understand employee needs

To make your employees happier, you need to know and understand their needs and expectations. They will differ according to their role, experience and personality. The best way to do this is to ask them directly and practice active listening - an essential skill for any good manager. Ask open-ended questions, listen to understand, not to answer, and rephrase in your own words.
Surveys and questionnaires are effective for identifying the key drivers of employee satisfaction, whether it's compensation, recognition or work-life balance. What's more, they will give you a picture of satisfaction trends within your organization and help you develop strategies that can improve it.
Employee needs change over time, so it's important to follow up on a regular basis and encourage open communication.

2. Establish a healthy corporate culture

Corporate culture is one of the keys to employee happiness and, let's face it, a must-have concept in the 21st century. It corresponds to a company's set of values and practices, and guides the actions and attitudes of its employees. Think about building a strong organizational culture and hire employees who share and embody your company's values.
A humane and equitable management style, a climate that fosters mutual support and teamwork, flattening hierarchies, matching skills to expected roles and recognizing achievements are examples of practices to consider in creating a healthy organizational culture and a positive, inclusive work environment.
A strong corporate culture fosters mobilization around common goals and increases employees' sense of belonging - and has a greater impact on their well-being than lukewarm Friday pizza.

3. Support professional development

A simple yet highly effective strategy for making your employees happier is to offer them professional development opportunities. Acquiring and practicing new knowledge and skills helps boost a sense of accomplishment, which has a significant impact on the individual happiness index.
Training outside the company, mentoring, job rotation are just a few examples of development opportunities you could put in place. Whatever solution you choose, your employees will be more motivated and invested in the company, and less likely to leave for a competitor.

4. Work-life balance

The pandemic has accelerated thinking about the place of work in our lives. Big resignations, silent resignations, hybrid work models... the desire to regain work-life balance is undeniable.
In a context of tightening labor markets and changing mindsets, it's essential to offer more than job stability and attractive pay to retain and attract top talent.
Adopt various strategies such as flexible working policies and encourage breaks and time off, including vacations. In addition to reducing stress, burnout and conflict, this strategy will enable you to increase productivity and reduce turnover, and therefore training and recruitment costs.

5. Promote health and physical well-being

It's well known that physical activity reduces the risk of illness and work stoppages, reduces stress and anxiety, and increases self-confidence and creativity.
No wonder, then, that wellness programs are steadily gaining in popularity within major corporations. Investing in such programs is an effective strategy for improving not only employee satisfaction and performance, but also their sense of belonging.
By promoting interaction, group physical activities strengthen interpersonal relationships, which in turn encourage collaboration, respect and communication within the organization. What's more, friendship, complicity and camaraderie are undeniable vectors of happiness...

6. Involve employees in decision-making

To foster a sense of belonging and commitment, involve your employees in decision-making. Link their tasks to the overall objectives. In this way, they will take ownership of the company's mission and vision, and see how their work contributes to its success.
By valuing your teams' ideas and suggestions, you encourage them to innovate to achieve common goals. Soliciting feedback and delegating is also a great way to show your employees trust and respect, and to motivate them!
Moreover, it will be easier to implement new processes if your teams have been involved in their ideation.

7. Adopt good management practices

While it's important to involve employees in decision-making, it's important to avoid the trap of work overload and remain sensitive to the various obstacles they may face. Impostor syndrome, burnout, and toxic team climates are examples.
As a manager, you need to be attentive to both your employees' professional and personal challenges, and support them by providing the tools they need.
Your attitude affects the work climate, so be inspiring, positive and enthusiastic. Create an inclusive work environment, delegate and avoid falling into micromanagement.
Give recognition, bearing in mind that some tasks are sometimes invisible. And remember that employees are less anxious when they know clearly what is expected of them.

8. Encourage autonomy

By providing your employees with a clear job description and objectives, you establish the markers within which they can make their own decisions.
This latitude has a positive impact on their sense of competence, and helps to transform, even flatten, the hierarchical relationship: it's no longer a matter of monitoring hours worked and the progress of projects, but of supporting employees in achieving results.
You'll thus establish a climate of trust, and give them more opportunities to achieve and showcase their strengths and talents.

9. Provide a stimulating environment

We're sensitive to our work environment; it has an impact on how we work, our motivation and even our productivity.
You could set up a lunchroom in a bright location, shared spaces conducive to communication and collaboration, and play or exercise areas for breaks.
Multiply green plants, they've been shown to have a positive impact on job satisfaction.
Aesthetic considerations aren't the only ones that come into play, there's also everything to do with comfort, such as temperature, humidity and brightness.
Technology has made us more sedentary, with many employees spending long hours sitting in front of their computers. Offer them ergonomic, modular workstations, and you'll limit the risk of injury."

Source: Happiness at work: 9 strategies to make your employees happier

https://gorh.co/bonheur-au-travail/

It's extraordinary to experience a time when the company wants you to be happy. It's a wake-up call for people's consciences, but also for human resources departments who realize that they need to attract and retain employees. If the company doesn't please, it can disappear. Happiness in the workplace is a fundamental key to Enterprise 3.0.

The setting, the environment, the image, the management or the ergonomics: every detail counts if you want to keep your employees, but a fundamental and far more important ultimate detail is lurking in the landscape.

Does our student like studying? Does our employee like doing his job? Because knowing how to do something isn't the same as liking wanting to or liking doing something. To preserve the mental health of our student or employee, to prevent them from depression which in the process will cost us huge sums of money, or to maintain our employees without wearing them out before their time we also need them to take care of themselves with our help.

Passion as a driving force

Watched nights reading a book, whole days practicing the guitar, weeks training for a marathon... Have you noticed how passion is an extremely powerful driving force? It's a source of energy that makes us forget everything else, and enables us to overcome many physical and mental constraints.
No wonder some employers like to say they have a team of passionate people. Passionate people seem to have no limits and no difficulties. So, we want to recruit people who love their job, who are passionate, who will be happy, who will perform well at work... Stop. Aren't we mixing things up a bit here?

Do you have to be passionate to be happy at work?

As Philippe Laurent points out, "the man who is passionate about his work doesn't feel like he's working." Good deal, on the face of it.
But being passionate is not synonymous with being happy when it comes to teamwork. "The passionate person is a great actor when it comes to energizing a project, but may have more difficulty relating to others." When you consider how important the quality of relationships is to happiness, it's a sobering thought. What's more, in a work context, there are added economic constraints that put the brakes on the exercise of a passion.
So, passion can foster happiness at work, but it's far from automatic or even necessary.

"Choose a job you love, and you won't have to work a day in your life."

Said Confucius some 2,500 years ago.

Exciting job or not, nothing is ever perfect

This quote attributed to Confucius is probably the best guide to choosing your career direction. However, the reality principle reminds us that loving, or even being passionate about your job, doesn't mean doing only what you love.
Take artists who have turned their passion into a profession and live comfortably from it. We tend to take the shortcut that they only do what they love. But there's always a part of their work that they do out of obligation, and which they'd happily do without. For example, answering the same questions from journalists for days on end can't be fun.
In the same vein, you can't get around the famous interview question "What don't you like to do? "with an answer like "I love everything, I'm passionate about my work." And that's even if you're genuinely passionate about your job ;) And don't forget that you'll need to illustrate all your statements with examples.

You don't fake passion

If you say you're passionate about your work, that means you'd like to know everything about the methods, theories, practices - in short, everything related to your job. And since it's impossible to know everything, that implies that you read/think/practice about it every day.
Can't honestly say you're passionate about your work? Don't panic. You probably have good reasons, like having chosen your profession based on your interests and personality.
Another argument for you: loving your work without being passionate about it means putting less emotion into it, of course, but also putting more reason into it. And self-control is important in life, even indispensable in certain professions.

...Be authentic!

As you can see, there are just as many arguments in favor of one as there are in favor of the other: profession-passion VS. profession-which-you-just-love.
The important thing is to accept yourself as you are, and to illustrate your arguments with examples. That's how you'll stand out from the crowd and inspire confidence.
And you, are you passionate about your work or do you think it's an overused idea?"

Source: Passion for your work: an overused idea? - July 2021 - https://oeildurecruteur.ca/passion-travail/

Happiness is self, it's others, it's the environment, it's the company, it's the school. Today, we're faced with a quest for happiness after having gone through quests for money and quests for recklessness. It's new, yes, but it's become inescapable. So, try happiness, pass on happiness and if you like it then so much the better; it's likely to last a long time.

Image source: Pixabay - Ferobanjo - https://pixabay.com/fr/photos/sauter-gens-heureux-femme-444612/