Happiness That Lasts at Work

Workplace wellbeing has grown into a profession. There are Chief Happiness Officers, wellbeing budgets, recognition platforms, mindfulness apps, engagement surveys every quarter.

Most of this comes from real care, and much of it helps. Good conditions matter: fair pay, safety and reasonable hours are where any of this has to start. But look at what most of it works on: conditions. A better office, a better benefit, a better week. Conditions bring pleasure, and pleasure has one property every people leader has seen in the survey data. It fades when the conditions change, and sometimes before.

This essay asks what the other kind of happiness would look like at work: the kind that doesn’t depend on conditions, and so doesn’t fade with them.

This could be read as “skip the perks, talk about trust”, which would be convenient for an employer who wants to spend less. That is not what we mean. Fair pay and good conditions matter; a family’s enough is real. The point is that conditions alone cannot make happiness last, and that the part they cannot reach is also the part most workplaces never measure.

Two kinds of happiness

Madhyasth Darshan, our primary source, draws the line sharply. Happiness, in its definition, is freedom from confusion and from problems: a present with resolution in it. Pleasure depends on conditions. Happiness depends on understanding.

The same book defines a happy person in a way that matters for any workplace: someone engaged in just conduct. Not someone with the best perks. Someone whose dealings with other people are fair, and are felt as fair on both sides.

Read together, the two definitions point to two places happiness at work is actually lost:

• Questions that stay unresolved. Why am I doing this work? How much is enough for my family, and is this job getting me there or only getting me more? What am I for, here?
• Relationships that are not trusted. A manager whose word doesn’t hold. A colleague who takes credit. Expectations that shift without anyone saying so.

No benefit fixes either. Both can be worked on.

What the working relationship is for

The source describes the relationship between people who work together with unusual precision. It calls it a complementary relationship: each side completes the other.

It is held by two commitments. The person leading is committed to their responsibility; the person working with them is committed to their duty. When both are fulfilled, the source says, there is a kind of music between them. In this relationship, what is exchanged, both position and material reward, is definite and expected on both sides.

And it names the one value that holds it all: trust. Respect and affection come with it, but trust is the main value, and what gives the relationship its continuity. The steadiness of that trust is, in the source’s words, the final experience of this relationship.

The source also defines what breaks it. Betrayal of trust is when someone does not act as was expected of them. Not a dramatic act; just an expectation, reasonably held, not met.

That is a useful definition for a people leader, because it moves the problem. Much of what erodes happiness at work is not cruelty. It is expectations that were never made definite, and so could not be kept.

“Trust needs something definite to be kept.”

What a people leader could do instead

Some practices that follow, offered as hypotheses to test rather than a programme:

• Make expectations definite. Role, responsibility, pay, how decisions are made: written down, understood the same way by both sides, and kept. Trust needs something definite to be kept.
• Evaluate relationships, both ways. The source defines justice as recognising a relationship, fulfilling its values, evaluating, and reaching satisfaction on both sides. Most workplaces evaluate one direction only. Ask the manager and the team the same question: is this relationship doing what it is for?
• Help people know their enough. A great deal of workplace pressure comes from earning without a known target. Helping people work out what enough is for their family changes what a raise, a promotion or a longer week is for. Our essays How much should we work? and How to calculate enough for a family set out a method.
• Make room for the real questions. Resolution comes from working on a question until it is understood, not from a session that soothes it. Time and a safe place to ask “why am I doing this?” may do more than another benefit.
• Measure trust and resolution, not only satisfaction. Satisfaction rises and falls with conditions. Ask instead: do people’s expectations of each other hold? Can they say what they are working towards, and whether they have reached enough?

What people put their trust in

The source asks a question that most organisations answer without noticing. Should a person put their trust in position, money and respect, or in six other things: confidence in oneself, respect for excellence, understanding, a balanced personality, self-reliance in one’s work, and being social in conduct?

It says this question needs public discussion. Most workplaces settle it by default, by what they reward. Position, pay and recognition are the currency, so they become what people trust.

A workplace that wanted happiness to last could reward the other six. Not instead of pay, which every family needs, but as what is actually being built.

A protocol to try

Pick one relationship at work: a manager, a colleague, or someone you lead. Write down what you expect of each other: role, responsibilities, how decisions are made. Ask them to do the same, then compare. Where the two lists differ, make one expectation definite this week, and keep it.

How we would know if we are wrong

This fails if:

• teams with definite, kept expectations turn out no happier, over time, than teams with better conditions;
• “resolution” and “trust” cannot be assessed at work without reducing them to another satisfaction score;
• people who work out their enough become less motivated in a way that harms them, not only the organisation.

We would also take seriously a quieter objection: that some workplaces cannot offer definite expectations, because the work itself is uncertain. Even then, the source’s point holds in a smaller form: say what is uncertain, and keep what can be kept.

An invitation

If you lead people, design workplaces, or are responsible for wellbeing, we would like to work through this with you: what happiness that lasts would mean for your people, and how to measure it. See also How to make happiness last and What does each relationship ask of us? Work with us →

Limitations

• We have not yet tested these practices in a workplace as a study. They are hypotheses drawn from the source.
• The source’s description of the working relationship assumes both sides are working in good faith. Exploitation needs more than better expectations; it needs justice.
• Many people work in conditions where the employer has far more power than they do. Definite expectations help, but do not remove that imbalance.

References

1. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, सुख (happiness), p. 199; सुखी (a happy person), p. 200
2. Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, विश्वास (trust) and विश्वासघात (betrayal of trust), p. 175
3. Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), pp. 138–139: the working relationship; trust as its main value
4. Manav Vyavahar Darshan (मानव व्यवहार दर्शन), p. 174: justice as recognising a relationship, fulfilling its values, evaluating, and mutual satisfaction
5. Vyavaharatmak Janvad (व्यवहारात्मक जनवाद), p. 85: trust in position, money and respect, or in six other things