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small in both the U.S. and Europe. He’s observed firsthand how positive emo-
tions can motivate and inspire people, but he has also seen that such feelings are
not easy to engender. What makes one employee happy won’t necessarily have
the same effect on the colleague sitting one desk away.
These and other findings from Menges’s research call into question the effi-
cacy of one-size-fits-all programs and instead point to a more individual ized ap-
proach to address ing well-being in the work place. It’s an approach, as Menges
recently described for strategy+business, that is challenging to implement given
the structure of many organizations — but that may hold the key to helping
people feel happier at work.
S+B: In your observation, how effective are the majority of today’s corporate
happiness and well-being initiatives?
MENGES: They are a good start. These programs show that organizations under-
stand that their employees’ emotions matter. That is in line with 30 years of or-
ganizational research, which has revealed the powerful effects emotions have on
how employees behave at work.
Having said that, many well-being initiatives fall short of expectations, be-
cause they only offer ways to relieve stress — for example, through yoga classes or
massages — and do not resolve the problems that originally caused the stress. If
orga nizations want to be serious about employee well-being, they need to recon-
sider how work gets done and systematically remove unnecessary stress factors.
Also, many happiness initiatives are not ultimately making employees happy,
because they follow a prescriptive approach that just doesn’t connect with em-
ployees. My colleagues and I have found (this is ongoing work, not yet published)
that what it means to be happy differs widely among people. Some of us, when
we say we want to be happy, actually mean that we want to feel calm and relaxed.
That’s what we would consider a state of happiness. Then there are others who
would say, “I want to be excited and enthusiastic. And if I’m feeling that, then I
am happy.” There may be others who need to feel inspired and awed in order to
feel happy. Some people want to be valued and appreciated, and still others just
want to have a safe, secure job.
This is the foundation of what we’ve termed emotional diversity: the idea that