DOES HAPPINESS ADD TO WORK PERFORMANCE?
A research synthesis using an online findings archive
Yezhen Fang & Ruut Veenhoven
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands, Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization
EHERO working paper 2023-05
ABSTRACT
Background: The ‘happy productive worker’ thesis (HPW) holds that the happiness of workers has a positive impact on their performance at work. As a result, increasing numbers of wellness programs are being implemented in the workplace, with the aim of heightening productivity.
Objectives: We seek to answer the following questions. (1) Does happiness really have a positive impact on work performance? If so, how strong is this impact? And how long does it last for? (2) Do the positive impacts on work performance differ across occupations? If so, which kinds of occupations benefit the most from these impacts? And does happiness produce similar impacts in the public sector as in the private sector? (3) Which component of happiness contributes most to positive impacts in the workplace: how well a worker feels most of the time (the affective component) or the degree to which a worker feels able to get what they want from life (the cognitive component)?
Method: We took stock of the research findings about the impacts of happiness (in the sense of life satisfaction) on the performance of workers that have been gathered in the World Database of Happiness. Three aspects of performance were considered: productivity, absenteeism and quitting the job (turnover). We drew on 33 studies that yielded 196 correlational findings over 26 countries and regions.
Results: Together, the findings provide strong evidence of the positive relationship between happiness and performance at work. (1) Longitudinal studies suggest that happiness has positive impacts on productivity at work, as measured at the micro-level using supervisor ratings of employee productivity and at the macro level as measured with national productivity. The average effect sizes of the longitudinal zero correlations of the productivity indicators that we investigated range from +0.21 to +0.38. The impacts of happiness on productivity at work are permanent. (2) The impacts of happiness on productivity at work differ across occupations and are strongest among people in leadership positions. Although the impacts of happiness on productivity are strong in the public sector, we were not able to compare them with those in the private sector. (3) Positive impacts in the workplace depend more on the affective component of happiness (how well a worker feels most of the time) than on the cognitive component (a worker’s perception of getting what they want from life).
Keywords: absenteeism, affect balance, happiness, productivity, research synthesis turnover, work performance
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