What Makes Workers Happy?

Employee engagement happens when employees go the extra mile and demonstrate a personal commitment to work. The opposite occurs when employees just show up.

You won't be shocked to hear that a number of academic studies show that engaged workers are more productive and make more of a positive difference at their company than disengaged workers. I think any third-grader could have told you that, but academics like this sort of thing.

I just attended a national conference of the National Academy of Human Resources, a group of top HR officers at large organizations. There was an excellent presentation about how hard companies are working to engage employees, and all that effort is worthy and makes a ton of sense, but there was one element I found completely missing. No one said anything about getting employees to engage themselves.

Let me give you an example. If you spend as much time on airplanes as I do, you talk to a lot of flight attendants. I met one who absolutely loved her job. She described it as her "ministry." Her goal was to be an example of what a good human being acts like in her interaction with customers. On another flight on the same airline, another attendant told me she couldn't wait to retire. Her goal was to get through the flight with the fewest distractions possible so she could read or think about something else.

Now, think about it. Both fly on the same plane. They work for the same boss, make roughly the same pay, have the same benefits, go through the same employee engagement programs. Why are they so different? It's clearly not anything coming from outside them. The difference is inside.

In our research, we've found that the people who say they're happy and find meaning at work are likely to say they're happy and find meaning at home, too. There is a very high correlation. In other words, our engagement at work says as much about who you are as who you work for.

So we're starting a new line of research: We're encouraging employees to take responsibility for their own engagement. We're having them implement their own strategies for improving their happiness, satisfaction, and experience of meaning. Then they measure their improvement. They will rate themselves on questions like: How happy was I today? How meaningful was today's work? How engaged was I in my work? How happy was I with this or that interaction, how meaningful did it seem to me and how engaged did I feel?

Here's how it works: Suppose you have to go to an hour-long meeting. You think it's going to be boring. You fear it'll be full of PowerPoint charts and droning speakers. You dread it. But you can't skip it.

You have two options:

• You could be miserable the whole time.
• You could make the most of it.

When we asked hundreds of managers to give us ideas on this case, they came up with all sorts of creative solutions. One said he'd figure out who the three most important people in the room were and find a way to introduce himself. Another would concentrate on reading everyone's body language to find out who really was in charge. One said, "What's in this meeting for me?" -- and came up with several important relationship-building ideas.

We are not naïve. We realize that this process of idea generation and creative problem solving won't raise the quality of the (otherwise useless) meeting from a one to a ten. On the other hand, if the value of the meeting goes up from a one to a five, both you and your company will benefit.

But let's forget about the company for a second. Each hour that you spend being unhappy and disengaged is an hour that is lost from your life. If you want to find one of the most important reasons to increase your experience of happiness, meaning and engagement, all you have to do is look in the mirror.

Maybe you'd rather not spend that hour (or any hour) at that meeting. But that hour is your life. Make it count -- not just for the company, but for yourself.