The Joy of Work?

Are you happy at work? Or do you just grin and bear it? We
spend an average of 25% of our lives at work, so it's
important to make the best of it.
The Joy of Work? looks at happiness and unhappiness
from a fresh perspective. It draws on up-to-date research
from around the world to present the causes and conse-
quences of low job satisfaction and gives helpful suggestions
and strategies for how to get more enjoyment from work.
The book includes interesting case studies about individual
work situations, and features simple self-completion ques-
tionnaires and procedures to help increase your happiness.
Practical suggestions cover how to improve a job without
moving out of it, advice about changing jobs, as well as how
to alter typical styles of thinking which affect your attitudes.
This book is unique. The subject is of major signi®cance
to virtually all adults ± people in jobs and those who are
hoping to get one. Based on research ®ndings, it is parti-
cularly distinctive in combining two areas that are usually
looked at separately ± self-help approaches to making
yourself happy and issues within organizations that affect
well-being.
The Joy of Work? has been written in a relaxed and
readable style by an exceptional blend of authors: a highly-
acclaimed professor of psychology and a widely published
business journalist. Bringing together research from
business and psychology ± including positive psychology ±
this practical book will make a big difference to your
happiness at work ± and therefore to your whole life.
Peter Warr is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Work
Psychology at the University of Shef®eld. Formerly
Director of the Social and Applied Psychology Unit in
that university (the world's largest research institute in its
®eld), he has undertaken research and consultancy in
hundreds of organizations.

Guy Clapperton has been a freelance business, technol-

ogy and media journalist for 15 years. In 2008 he became a
BAFTA juror, and is published regularly in the Sunday
Telegraph, Guardian, Times Independent and Financial
Times. He also broadcasts on the BBC World Service and
on BBC Radio London, and has edited a number of books on
employment practices.
 The Joy of Work?
Jobs, Happiness, and You

Peter Warr and Guy Clapperton

 First published 2010
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Copyright Ø 2010 Psychology Press

Cover design by Andrew Ward

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.

This publication has been produced with paper manufactured to strict

environmental standards and with pulp derived from sustainable forests.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Warr, Peter B. (Peter Bryan)
The joy of work? : jobs, happiness and you / Peter Warr and Guy
Clapperton.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-415-45965-5 (hardcover) ± ISBN 978-0-415-45966-2 (pbk.)
1. Job satisfaction. 2. Quality of work life. I. Clapperton, Guy. II. Title.
HF5549.5.J63W367 2010
650.1±dc22
2009011316

ISBN 0-203-83248-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-45965-5 (hbk)

ISBN 978-0-415-45966-2 (pbk)
 Contents

List of ®gures and questionnaires vii

Acknowledgments ix

1 Work and happiness: An unlikely mix? 1

2 Why work? 15
3 Feeling good and feeling bad 27
4 The Needed Nine features 51
5 What's in a job? 1. Seeking a happy medium 71
6 What's in a job? 2. When enough is enough 93
7 It's in your genes as well as your job 109
8 Come to think about it . . . happiness is
relative 121
9 Actions as well as words 141
10 Worth a try? 157

Appendix: Some further reading 179

Index 185
 List of ®gures and
questionnaires

Figures
The Happiness Wheel 37 and 145

Questionnaires
1 Overall job satisfaction 30±31
2 Feelings at work 39
3 Features in your job 106±107
4 What matters to you in a job? 138±139
5 Features in your job 148±149
 Acknowledgments

Where did the content of this book come from? From the
authors certainly, but also from a lot of other people. We've
talked with many individuals about jobs and their feelings
and have read a large number of articles and books. The
ideas which follow have many sources, and we are widely
grateful.
We particularly thank the interviewees quoted through-
out the chapters, those who offered interviews for which
space was unavailable, and the publisher's reviewers of an
initial draft who made many valuable suggestions. So too
did colleagues current and over the years, although most of
those could not have known of this book at the time. Thank
you all very much.
 1
Work and happiness: An
unlikely mix?

Some jobs are awful through and through, and some are
simply great. But most are in-between ± a mixture of the
good and the bad. Working1* involves doing things you
don't want to do as well as (in most cases) doing what you
enjoy. So it's not surprising that people view it in
contrasting ways.
You can see the two different outlooks in society across
the ages. The Bible, in the Book of Genesis, saw it as
punishment for original sin: only ``in the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread.'' Medieval work almost always
involved hard physical slog and all the potential for pain
and damage that involved, and later on Adam Smith
(1723±1790) argued that repetitive work made people ``as
stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to
become.''
Joking about the nastiness of work, Alfred Polgar
(1873±1955) suggested it's ``what you do so that some time
you won't have to do it any more.'' Nowadays, articles in
newspapers and magazines (not to mention all those blogs)
focus on the horrors of a job rather than exploring its
bene®ts, and television plays and ``soaps'' rely on the work-
place and other workers to create obstacles to a story's
successful outcome.
And then there's the impact of Dennis the Menace and
others of his kind. Dennis is the cover character of Britain's

* Throughout the book, reference Notes are listed at the end of a chapter.
2 THE JOY OF WORK?

best-selling children's weekly, the Beano, and also a

successful cartoon character with a popular namesake in
the USA. He has his own annual book and has held the
Beano cover position for more than three decades appearing
every week since 1951. Generations of young people have
empathized with his activities. Dennis's view of work is
clear ± it's bad!
He is basically a workshy child, who'd prefer to be out
®ghting against authority rather than doing anything
constructive, although the American version tends more to
cuteness than anarchy. The UK version has an enemy
called Walter who suffers terribly at Dennis's hands.
Walter is a Softy, partly because he likes school. Instead,
Dennis makes it clear that he hates work of any kind. He's
great fun, but is also a role model telling us early in life
that work and discipline are bad.
This anti-work outlook is not restricted to Dennis the
Menace, of course. For example, there's also been Bart
Simpson: avoiding school, with no real aptitude for work,
and worshipping his equally idle father, Homer. Neither
will willingly put in an honest day's toil, and that's why
they're ``cool.'' The Simpsons have huge numbers of fol-
lowers all over the globe. Just William, Horrid Henry,
Minnie the Minx and other popular books and comic strips
are full of these downbeats ± they're massively popular and
they're massively anti-work. All of them convey a powerful
message early in life.
There are also more mature examples. The British poet
Philip Larkin (1922±1985) asked in the ®rst line of his
poem Toads:

Why should I let the toad work

Squat on my life?

Got the picture? A generally negative image of work is

emphasized around us. From childhood to adult years we
are encouraged to see it as bad.
However, another view has also long been argued.
Martin Luther (1436±1546) claimed that ``the human being
is created to work as the bird is created to ¯y,'' and John
 AN UNLIKELY MIX? 3

Calvin (1509±1564) thought work for its own sake would

offer its own rewards. His views were particularly import-
ant in forming the Protestant work ethic, which was based
on both religious and worldly bene®ts ± hard work is good
because it helps you to get to Heaven as well as perhaps
making you wealthy. Look also at George Berkeley (1658±
1753), who considered ``there can be no such thing as a
happy life without labour,'' or Thomas Hobbes (1588±1679)
who said ``work is good; it truly is a motive for life.'' Thomas
Carlyle (1795±1881) was another great fan: ``there is a
perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work.''
Early Puritans emphasized a different kind of value;
work prevented idleness which exposed people to all sorts
of opportunities for sin. Samuel Pepys (1633±1703) gave
us another theme; he liked to stay late in his of®ce
because that meant he didn't have to go home to quarrel
with his wife.
Sigmund Freud (1856±1939) didn't only talk about love
and sex; he saw work as one of the main pillars of a healthy
life. Noel Coward (1899±1973) even suggested that work
was ``much more fun than fun.'' You probably think that
Henry Ford (1863±1947) went over the top when he claimed
that ``work is our sanity, our self-respect, our salvation. So
far from being a curse, work is the greatest blessing.''
Nevertheless, recent surveys have shown that the majority
of workers ± 70% plus ± say they're satis®ed with what they
do. And let's not forget that Philip Larkin wrote a sequel to
the poem we quoted earlier ± Toads Revisited ± in which he
acknowledged that in middle age he rather liked the old
toad of work.
You probably don't often stop to think about it, but
work is widely valued as a central part of life.

You're born, and before too long you have to start

spending most of your time working to sustain yourself.
Along with love and your physical being, work is key to
your existential circumstances. Who am I? What do I
want? What is my place in the world and my status in it?
Am I useful? Am I ful®lled? . . . Work de®nes, to a large
degree, your external identity as part of the social matrix.
4 THE JOY OF WORK?

But it also looms very large in your inner sense of how

you're traveling through life.2

So work is both a bad thing and a good thing. However,

as children and adults we have been encouraged by popular
culture to emphasize the negative and to play down the
idea that jobs can contribute to our happiness.
This book recognizes the harm that jobs can cause ± the
tiredness, anxiety, back pain, reduced family time, and so
on ± but builds on the positive potential that exists in
nearly every one. Most of us can't avoid working ± it takes
up around a third of our life ± so let's enjoy it as much as
we can. Writing in The Times on 10 January 2009, Janice
Turner was troubled by the anti-job prejudice she saw
among young girls. Her message was clear: ``Work is good,
it can even be noble. It can make us forget ourselves. That
is what we should tell our daughters. It can be hard,
thankless, scary, joyless at times. But you will feel useful,
purposeful, part of the world.''
In these pages we'll look into the principal features of
jobs, and explore the way those might be changed. The
chapters will be based on research by psychologists from all
over the world, shedding light on issues facing all of us but
rarely escaping from the pages of academic journals. We'll
also talk to people ± quote actual examples of what they
have done about their jobs. However, the book doesn't only
identify the causes of happiness or unhappiness in jobs;
we'll set out some courses of action. There are inevitably
limits, but it's usually possible to do something to increase
your work happiness. It's certainly worth looking at the
possibilities.

Key concepts
Let's run through some of the notions we'll be dealing with.
``Work'' is in general a question of doing something you
``have to'' do, and it's likely to require exertion and be
arduous, burdensome, or ``hard work'' for at least part of
the time. In this book we're usually referring to paid work.
For most people that involves being a full-time employee of
 AN UNLIKELY MIX? 5

someone else, but it can be self-employment or part-time

employment. And you can also ``work'' in other ways which
don't involve payment, such as housework, voluntary work
and do-it-yourself work; many of the book's themes also
apply there, although those activities are not the primary
concern here.
The other notion we'll be discussing is ``happiness.''
Most of us recognize this when we feel it, but ®nding a
precise de®nition is like nailing down soot. For centuries,
philosophers have struggled to analyze what it means, and
general agreement has proven all but impossible. For now,
let's just say that it's a state of feeling good, and that
unhappiness is feeling bad. That will be made more de®nite
in Chapter 3. Our terms will be mostly psychological, but
we'll be relating those to people's day-to-day experience.
We'll identify different kinds of happiness and unhappi-
ness, as well as their likely causes.
The word's root comes from Middle English ± ``hap''
which means chance or luck. Think about ``happenstance''
and ``haplessness'' and you'll see we still have the original
meaning buried in other words. The modern de®nition owes
less to luck than to the deliberate efforts of the happy
individual, and a lot of it comes from factors within the
person rather than merely from outside.
By the end of the book you should be clear why some
people are happier or unhappier at work than others. For
a start, job title might provide a clue. Several studies indi-
cate that people in certain kinds of job are in general
happier or less happy than others. In one British investi-
gation, gardeners, hairdressers and care assistants were
among the most satis®ed, while bus drivers, postal workers
and assembly line workers were among the least. Another
study found that the happiest workers included chefs and
members of the clergy, while architects and secretaries
were the least happy in their jobs. Research in the USA has
revealed that managers and administrators are among the
most satis®ed, whereas the lowest-scorers include machine
operators and laborers.
These sorts of study are a start, but a job title on its
own doesn't tell us much by way of explanation. There has
6 THE JOY OF WORK?

to be more to it than that, particularly since people with the

same title can have different experiences. For example, job
satisfaction depends partly on your age (it's lowest on
average between 35 and 45). And the content of two jobs
with the same title can vary considerably, depending for
instance on the size of the company and the nature of the
business. Even if we could be certain that job title alone
had some sort of connection with people's happiness at
work, it wouldn't be all that useful as information about the
sources of their good or bad feelings.
To make sense of job title patterns, you have to look
deeper. What is it about different job titles and the activities
that go with them which makes people happy or unhappy?
It's here that the research becomes particularly interesting
and applicable to all of us. If you can identify the com-
ponents that go into a job to make someone happy, then
perhaps you can ®t some into your own job. Or perhaps you
might be able to re¯ect on your position in those terms and
reassess your state of mind while you're at work.
Levels of short-term happiness and long-term happi-
ness can coincide, but they don't always. Happiness can be
associated with a single event but it's also a continuing
state of mind. During the course of the book we'll be con-
sidering these various forms of happiness, looking at what
stimulates them, and suggesting how they might perhaps
be increased. And of course we'll also be covering the bad
feelings ± unhappiness in its several forms.

Why does it matter?

There are many reasons for taking these issues seriously,
whether you're an employer wanting a more ful®lled and
productive workforce or an employee wishing for a more
ful®lling life. Quite simply, happiness is a principal objec-
tive in life. People will always seek it, for themselves and
for their family, friends, colleagues, staff and others. That
is enough of a reason to write books about it.
Indeed, there have been many such books. They range
from academic volumes by philosophers, historians and
psychologists (even by economists in recent years) to
 AN UNLIKELY MIX? 7

suggestions about how to reduce your own distress. Happi-

ness and unhappiness are popular topics for television
programs and magazine articles, usually dealing with a
particular lifestyle issue likely to interest their audience or
readership. Themes might cover ``How married people can
stay happy,'' ``Be happy during the credit crunch,'' or ``Eat
your way to happiness.''
But where do you ®nd books and articles about being
happy in your job? Those are few and far between, even
though almost everyone spends a large proportion of their
time at work. No one doubts that happiness is important
and deserves discussion in nonwork situations, but popular
media often give the impression that happiness issues
disappear once you set foot in the workplace. That is non-
sense. People want to be happy in their jobs, just as else-
where, and many are not happy there. Many of the same
issues deserve attention in both work and nonwork settings.
Another way in which happiness is an important topic
comes from the effect it has on behavior and social rela-
tionships. Let's start in the workplace. Happy people will
generally contribute more to an organization than their less
happy counterparts. Research investigations by psycholo-
gists in many countries have revealed a general association
between positive job feelings and performance in a job.
More satis®ed employees are likely to achieve more work
goals. They will also be absent less often and remain with
their organization for a longer time; if you don't enjoy your
job, you're probably interested in ®nding another one. (And,
to be mercenary for a moment, the cost to an employer of
replacing a good worker can run into thousands of pounds
or dollars; losing a lot of good workers because they're
unhappy costs a lot of thousands.)
There's more. Satis®ed workers have been shown to be
more cooperative and supportive of colleagues, to provide
stronger support to others in dif®cult times, and to be
generally more willing to ``go the extra mile'' for their
colleagues. Psychologists refer to that as ``organizational
citizenship behavior'' and the evidence is clear: less satis-
®ed employees are less good citizens in their organization.
Happier employees also contribute to their greater job
8 THE JOY OF WORK?

success by showing more initiative ± looking out for prob-

lems in advance and ®nding their own solutions, rather
than merely sitting back and waiting for someone else to
sort things out. More extremely, a happy employee is also
less likely to steal company property, introduce viruses on a
memory stick, or ± as in the legendary story of the dis-
gruntled woman on being sacked ± phone the speaking
clock in another country and leave the line open all
weekend.
These patterns don't just involve individuals on their
own. Cheerful behavior also encourages positive reactions
from other people. The colleagues of a happy worker have
been found to respond more positively to him or her. People
in a positive mood are treated by others in a more friendly
way and helped more, so that together a positive group
morale is built up. This is the notion of ``reciprocity,'' a
central theme in social psychological thinking ± we tend
to give back what we receive. Overall, happy people's
better social relationships were described in a recent review
of research as ``one of the most robust ®ndings in the
literature.''
Of course, these are broad conclusions and not uni-
formities. Unhappy workers do not all behave in exactly the
same way, and some are undoubtedly good at their jobs.
But the fact remains that extensive research has demon-
strated general links between being happier in your job and
being better at that job. We want to emphasize that we are
not simply stating our own opinions ± there are a lot of
those around in books about happiness ± we have reviewed
in detail a large number of research publications.
There have also been studies that look at organizations
as a whole ± showing that companies with higher average
employee happiness also have better ®nancial performance
and customer satisfaction. The well-being of staff can have
a material effect on a company's bottom-line pro®ts, and
nobody should think otherwise. That has to be the classic
win±win situation.
The reverse sequence also occurs. Good performance at
work can itself promote well-being, as effective work leads
to satisfaction with what you have achieved, new personal
 AN UNLIKELY MIX? 9

opportunities, appreciation from customers, and possibly an

increased salary. More generally, research has consistently
shown that success breeds happiness as well as happiness
leading to success.
There are a lot of factors associated with these issues,
as we'll examine later. There are also apparent contradic-
tions, for example the idea that if you want people to be
happy at work then it's good to let them manage them-
selves, but they still need to be supervised. Sometimes it's
important to look for the ``happy medium,'' rather than seek
the maximum amount of a possible feature.
And there's no escaping the fact that even happy people
have periods of unhappiness. Indeed, there is a sense in
which you often can't have one without the other. That's
the ``no pain, no gain'' idea which can keep sportspeople
battling on (through the ``pain barrier'') and overweight
dieters struggling for a little bit longer. It's certainly not
always the case, but happiness does often depend on
achieving goals which have required you to struggle for a
period, probably feeling anxious, worried and generally
anything but happy. You will undoubtedly experience ten-
sion and distress on your way to some kinds of happiness ±
that's life.

In this book
As a sort of road-map for where we're going, here's an
outline of the later chapters.
Chapter 2 looks at motivation ± why do people want a
job? Take a colleague of ours who is freelance and has
erratic income. Why, you might ask, would any sane person
opt for such an unsteady life with so little chance of
budgeting sensibly or organizing regular working hours?
He has answers, making the point that there's a lot more to
work motivation than the purely ®nancial.
The next chapter covers happiness itself ± joy, exuber-
ance, comfort and calmness ± balanced against the
unhappy downside ± anxiety, depression and similar feel-
ings. We'll provide questionnaires for you to do a bit of self-
testing, and also look at the popular notion of ``job
10 THE JOY OF WORK?

satisfaction.'' This chapter will give you an idea of the

different kinds of happiness or unhappiness that may be
important for you.
In the fourth chapter we move to look at everyday
features that are fundamental to feeling good or bad. We'll
do that in terms of the ``Needed Nine'' key elements in any
situation ± in your family, leisure activities, or wherever.
These include features such as having some in¯uence over
what happens to you, a moderate level of demands, good
social contacts, and a role that you value ± and not for-
getting money. Chapter 4 will look also at people who are
unemployed or retired and those who are caring for their
family perhaps in between paid jobs. How do these people's
lives stack up in terms of the Needed Nine features?
Chapters 5 and 6 transfer the Needed Nine aspects of
life into the workplace, looking at how these sources of good
or bad feelings operate in a job. We'll see that for jobs it's
essential to add three more features ± having supportive
bosses, a good career outlook, and organizational fairness.
Altogether, we thus examine what are labeled as the ``Top
Twelve'' features in any job ± the ones that really matter
for happiness or unhappiness. Focusing on your own
position, another questionnaire is provided for you to create
a pro®le of your own job in those terms.
The next two chapters look at happiness in¯uences
within you rather than in your situation. There's no doubt
the same job can be experienced differently by different
people, and that's partly a question of their genes ± what
they were born with. Research evidence is mounting that
people carry round their own ``baseline'' of low or high
happiness, and that this is largely inherited. Chapter 7 will
review that evidence, and show that happiness and
unhappiness are linked to certain traits of continuing
personality.
In Chapter 8 we'll put these elements against different
personal preferences, work values, and ways of thinking
about jobs. Writing about 400 years ago, William Shake-
speare made one of his characters point out (in disagree-
ment with others about how to view a situation) that ``there
is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.''3