Work and happiness, can they be combined?
In the classical, Calvinistic view of work, this has nothing to do with happiness. You simply work to provide for your livelihood and after work you continue with your life. Given the importance of work to us, this is too simplistic a view these days. Most of us look for work that means something , where you can use your talents and grow with people who help you further and help to make something in or to the world better. Work is more than the exchange of hours for money.
In addition, with the shift from work to knowledge work, the person doing the work is a more important factor. So also how that person feels. The ability to learn, the will to show ownership and the desire to contribute make employees more creative, able to handle more work and remain sustainably employable.
Where do you start?
If you want to get started with happiness in an organization, Handboek werkgeluk (affiliate) by Ad Bergsma, Onno Hamburger and Erwin Klappe is a good place to start. It is a toolbox with all kinds of tools that help you to make work happiness concrete at organizational and individual level. The book consists of three parts:
Happy organizing: how do I stimulate job satisfaction in my organization?
Happy leadership: how do I stimulate job satisfaction in my team?
Happy work: how do I increase my own job satisfaction?
So it is not a book that primarily helps you to organize your own life differently, but is mainly aimed at organizations and teams.
Each part contains a number of essays, in which one specific aspect of job satisfaction is addressed. In this, quite a few tools are presented. The authors have a great preference for models. The following are discussed in the book:
The pyramid of job satisfaction
An ABC culture
The three basic needs from self- kuwait telegram data determination theory
The three pillars of progress-oriented work
The five-stage rocket to sustainable employability
The HEART model
The four pillars of job satisfaction
The energy compass
The eight of job satisfaction
Enough theory! The characteristics of job satisfaction are emphasized differently in the different chapters. Or as Coert Visser describes it in the collection:
Psychologists treat other people's theories like toothbrushes – no self-respecting person wants to use someone else's
There are of course common threads, such as the importance of autonomy and the meaning of your work. One author also includes well-functioning IT and pleasant workp
