Does it matter if you are 'happy' at work?

All the swingometers suggest that being happy is good for us, there are fewer aches and pains, our immune system is more robust, and we can bask in the antidote to stress – who doesn’t feel good when that little ray of sunshine sings so sweetly? Whether it matters for our work lives is the question. HR Grapevine reports.

If we are living in the Truman show, the answer would be ‘yes’. All those employees cycling to work with their pearly whites, a sprig of farmer’s market coriander neatly packed into a willow basket and a pair of shiny shoes perfectly tied as the pedalling takes hold, there’s no doubt it’s affirmative in this respect. The workers that sing as they cycle, minus any creases on their brows - for in this fictional world there is no inkling of stress or anxiety. It’s just pure joy, all day, every day.

Over in the real world where the fun brakes exist, and in the part that Truman discovers he is on a TV set, the everyday is far bleaker. Most of the workforce get up, (reluctantly) rub their eyes, throw yesterday’s clothes on, grab a tepid, instant coffee and march like the living dead either to the train or to a work from home office. The commute variables indifferent to the growing number of creases that arrive on employees’ foreheads, albeit slightly softened if the commute is a walk from the bedroom to the kitchen table. What we actually ‘do’ in those waking and ‘working’ hours can be the difference to how hearty we feel when someone plants the question, ‘is it love or loathe your job?’

‘It won’t feel like work if it’s something that you love’

Without sounding smug, I am lucky that I genuinely feel some ‘lurve’ for my job – don’t get me wrong, I don’t always adore all the fluff that surrounds the world of journalism – the meetings, the politics, the reporting, the analysis of how a story has performed - but if we refer to the nuts and bolts of writing, it’s all I have ever wanted to do and it’s all I want to do. Simply put, I am never happier than typing out the words and creating sentences.

I imagine that this is so for many professions – artists, cooks, teachers, lifeboat personnel, engineers, astronauts (well who doesn’t feel happy floating around in one of those suits), potters, farmers – the list goes on. It’s the holy grail isn’t it – ‘it won’t feel like work if you do something that you love’ and I am lucky that I do.