Happiness at work : using positive psychology interventions to increase worker well-being

Abstract

Being happy has many benefits such as being more successful, more socially engaged and healthy (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). In organizations, individuals who are happy at work have greater productivity and organizational citizenship behaviour, and less job withdrawal (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). Given these potential benefits, this study attempted to increase and sustain worker happiness over a one month period, using two interventions from Seligman' s positive psychotherapy (Seligman et al., 2005). The effectiveness of these two interventions was evaluated against a neutral control condition using a pre-post design. The study was internet-based and the participants were required to complete their intervention six times over a 10 day work period. It was found that the gratitude condition showed some potential to increase happiness, but the results were not significant. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.