Be happy at work, you really got little choice

A balanced life is needed for a healthy and thriving mind, which in turn means the company will get the best out of the employee. [Courtesy]

The International Day of Happiness will be marked on March 20th, and I have been thinking about happiness in the work place. Most of us are destined to spend a quarter of our adult life at work, a figure surely set to increase as retirement ages are ever-increasing. If you add to that the third of our time spent sleeping, that doesn’t leave a whole lot for anything else.

Happiness is typically defined by how people experience and evaluate their lives as a whole. (OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Wellbeing 2013). With this in mind, it is clear that the workplace needs to contribute towards our wellbeing rather than detract from it. This, sadly, is too often not the case.