Happiness at work: What’s the truth for you and your team?
Happiness at work means different things to different people.
At the end of September 2020, organisations around the world marked the International Week of Happiness at Work.
The timing was almost painfully ironic.
COVID had disrupted businesses, separated teams, placed millions of people on furlough and caused many others to question things they had previously taken for granted.
Including work itself.
Were they happy?
Did their work matter to them?
Were they doing it because they wanted to — or simply because they’d become accustomed to the salary, status and security it provided?
Those questions mattered in 2020.
They still matter today.
WHAT DOES HAPPINESS AT WORK ACTUALLY MEAN?
The difficulty with talking about “happiness at work” is that happiness means different things to different people.
What energises one person can exhaust another.
Some people thrive on relationships and interaction. Others value autonomy and independence. Some need challenge, recognition or progress. Others are motivated by security, contribution or purpose.
So perhaps trying to make everybody “happy” is the wrong starting point.
A better one is:
What matters to this person?
At Perfect Teams®, we’ve always been interested in the relationship between character, motives and purpose.
When people understand what motivates them and feel that what they’re doing has meaning, work can become immensely satisfying.
When those things are persistently absent, frustration usually follows.
That’s why understanding people matters.
CULTURE DOESN’T COME FROM A HAPPINESS INITIATIVE
If organisations want people to flourish at work, it can’t be confined to a themed week, wellbeing initiative or occasional team-building exercise.
Culture is something people experience every day.
And leadership has an enormous influence on it.
Do people feel understood?
Can they contribute?
Are different characters valued?
Do people have sufficient responsibility and autonomy?
Can they speak openly?
Do they understand what they’re trying to achieve together?
The answers tell us considerably more about a workplace than a poster announcing Happiness at Work Week.
2020 PUT HAPPINESS TO THE TEST
COVID provided an extraordinary experiment in how differently people respond to the same circumstances.
Millions suddenly found themselves working from home.
Some loved it.
Others hated it.
Why should that surprise us?
People are different.
Our Perfect Teams® work showed us that people whose energy came particularly strongly from human interaction and relationships could find prolonged isolation much harder than colleagues who naturally preferred greater independence.
The important lesson wasn’t that one way of working was better than another.
It was that one way of working wasn’t right for everybody.
Understanding character allowed leaders to see those differences and respond accordingly.
THEN SOMETHING MORE INTERESTING HAPPENED
As the pandemic continued, conversations began changing.
People weren’t merely asking:
“Am I happy working from home?”
Some were asking:
“Am I happy doing this at all?”
During one of our training sessions, a new Perfect Teams® licensee described what had happened to him and several of his former C-suite colleagues.
They had, he suggested, become “addicted to the salary.”
The salary was good.
The lifestyle had grown around it.
The status mattered.
Then redundancy suddenly removed the structure they’d become accustomed to.
Some lost their mojo.
Others began to reassess what they actually wanted from their lives.
In the disruption, they started getting back in touch with what mattered to them.
That observation has stayed with me.
WHEN THE OLD WAY NO LONGER WORKS
Periods of disruption have an uncomfortable habit of asking questions we’d rather avoid.
Am I doing work that matters to me?
What motivates me?
What am I capable of?
What would I do if the familiar structures disappeared?
And perhaps the hardest:
Am I staying because I choose to — or because I’ve become dependent upon what I have?
Those aren’t really questions about workplace happiness.
They’re questions about purpose, responsibility and capability.
And they’re not confined to individuals.
Teams and organisations face similar moments.
The familiar way of operating stops working. Circumstances change. Relationships are tested. People reassess what they want. The organisation has to adapt.
Those moments can be uncomfortable.
But they can also be enormously valuable.
Because disruption reveals things that stability can hide.
HAPPINESS ISN’T SOMETHING AN ORGANISATION CAN GIVE YOU
An organisation can create the conditions in which people flourish.
Good leadership matters.
Culture matters.
Relationships matter.
Meaningful work matters.
Understanding different characters matters.
But ultimately, happiness can’t simply be provided as an employee benefit.
People also have to understand themselves — their motives, character, purpose and the contribution they want to make.
That requires something from both sides.
For organisations, it means creating environments in which different people can contribute and grow.
For individuals, it means taking increasing responsibility for understanding what they want and developing the capability to pursue it.
Perhaps that was the deeper irony of Happiness at Work Week in 2020.
At precisely the moment we were supposed to be celebrating happiness at work, millions of people were being forced to ask themselves what work — and happiness — actually meant to them.
And that’s not a bad question to revisit from time to time.
What’s the truth for you?
You can’t download capability.™
Build a more capable team
Perfect Teams® helps leaders understand what motivates different characters, strengthen relationships and create teams in which people can contribute at their best.
Originally published 28 October 2020. Updated August 2026.
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