The (un)Happy Workplace Quotient

While most men have come out happy as compared to women at work, the healthcare sector ruled the roost, housing the maximum number of happy employees, reveals a recent survey

LIFE IS ALL ABOUT perspective and that's true for people in organisations too.

The need to seek happiness at work is becoming increasingly important. Yet, the majority of the employees are experiencing low levels of happiness at work. There lies a strong urge to prioritize happiness but it is not met with a satisfactory level of the same. This unquenched thirst for a higher level of workplace happiness, hence, permeates into several other aspects of employees' work life.

A recent study by happyness.me and House of Cheers, titled 'Happiness At Work: How Happy is India's Workforce?' states that only 45 per cent of men are happy at the workplace as compared to women (37 per cent). Namrata Tata, Managing Partner, House of Cheer believes there are multiple factors that tend to play a role here. Our data suggest that factors such as autonomy, belongingness, and work-life balance are commonly given value by both men and women for seeking happiness at work, women specifically circle out stress and mental health as well. And this comes from the divided gender roles in our society. Although these roles are fortunately beginning to get subdued with time, there is still an extremely large extent to which they are still entrenched and that permeates the professional lives of women as well.

Women are constantly juggling between their home and their job and have this pressure to multitask and live up to the expectation of doing so. Any time there is an imbalance, it is likely to take a toll on their mental health, which also explains why several women are forced to leave their jobs, in turn. Other than this, the external factors such as the pay gaps between genders and the opportunities to climb up the ladder in their workplace definitely play a part too and this is validated by the numbers in our study too,” Tata adds.