According to Andrew Oswald, statistically the happiest kind of worker in Britain is: "a woman, in her 50s, not working in London, living close to her job so that she doesn’t have a long commute. Not especially highly educated, possibly part-time or self-employed, probably working in a small work place with just ten or twenty employees."

Worker happiness is not an add-on – for it to come about, it needs to be integrated into an organisation's working practices and into what economists call the work contract between capital and labour.

Angela Ishmael, of The Work Foundation:
"One of the things we've been trying to do with organisations is to get them to understand the relationship between treating their staff really well and creating an environment where employees feel valued and how that links to not just the public image of the organisation but the organisation's performance. We think it's really important that organisations understand that treating their staff well doesn't just mean giving them lots and lots of money, it means an environment where they can actually give of their best. It means the reduction and elimination of discrimination generally, of systems and procedures that discriminate. It means allowing a level of empowerment, in terms of allowing people accountability and responsibility to make the organisation work. And it means finding innovative ways of working that allow people to give of their best whilst actually meeting other kinds of responsibilities that they have other than work."

Will Hutton, Chairman of The Work Foundation:
"Arguably the work contract between capital and labour has been at the centre of economics since it developed as a social science 150 years ago. Now we're watching economists broaden the nature of what that contract is, recognising how people feel about their work, how they relate to it as a dimension that's pretty important in any calculation about productivity. I think that economists are actually wearing a pretty utilitarian hat when they begin to explore the nature of the work contract not just as a kind of money exchange between a worker and his or her hirer, but recognising all the other dimensions that make that worker work well."

The UK has some of the longest working hours in Europe, so it's in everyone's interest that workers are productive throughout the working week. A happy and engaged workforce benefits not just employers and employees – it also benefits society at large:

"I think two things flow from an engaged workforce, a workforce which feels it’s working well. One – you get a high productivity economy and there’s a lot of benefits from that. You just are wealthier, you can afford to do more interesting things. And whether it’s public services or one's individual choices as a human being, all are enlarged by being wealthier rather than poorer. Secondly I think that the engagement that comes at work spills over into civil life; into political life. You get people who are more engaged in their local community, in their neighbourhood, in the political process, more willing to give to charity, more willing to participate in associations in their neighbourhood and so you get into a virtuous circle." (Hutton)

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Content last updated: 15/06/2002

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