Love your work? A packed lunch might do the trick
September 18, 2010

And bosses benefit too, writes Paul Bibby.

IT HAS become a daily ritual at finance companies, law firms and corporate headquarters across Sydney.

With the arrival of the hour once known as ''lunch'', employees logout, shed their office gear for shorts or tracksuit pants and gather for a brief but refreshing ''well-being'' session.

The nature of the activity varies - yoga, meditation, brain gym and boxing are all in vogue - but the philosophy is broadly the same: a happy employee is a good employee.

And as more is learnt about the productivity of engaged and motivated employees, happiness at work is fast becoming the holy grail of human resources managers. But just what does it take for us to be happy at work?

Tai chi and touch football are no doubt of benefit to our working lives, but is the current infatuation with them hiding more fundamental issues of work intensification, overtime and fulfilling work practices?

HR managers, executive coaches and workplace psychologists gathered to tackle these questions in Sydney yesterday at the Happiness + Wellbeing @ Work Conference.

Having analysed highly successful organisations such as the triple-premiership-winning Brisbane Lions Australian rules team, executive coach Tony Wilson believes happiness and engagement at work come down to basic human psychology.

''Fundamentally, people tend to see tasks and challenges at work in terms of either a threat or a reward - as something that will benefit me or something that represents a threat to me,'' Mr Wilson said.

''Where there's a threat invoked we move away from higher-level processing and go back to very basic patterns of thinking that we're used to. When people feel that we have autonomy, have a say in what we're doing, as well as a certain level of status and belonging, we're going to perform at peak capacity.''

The benefits in productivity from engaged and happy workers are hard to refute.

''Your healthiest employees are two to three times more productive than your least healthy,'' a health and well-being consultant, Michelle McCracken from Cultivate Sanitarium, said yesterday.

''Companies undertaking a workplace health and well-being program on average reap $5 for every $1 they spend … Every health risk your employees have costs your business money.''

It is enough to make any hard-nosed bean counter smile.

But the recently published Australian Work-Life Index 2010 suggests happiness at work and productivity may not always go hand-in-hand. The index, compiled from a survey of 2800 workers by the University of South Australia, found many workers would be happier if they simply didn't work as much.

It found that more than 20 per cent of Australians spent 48 hours or more at work each week, and 75 per cent of those said they would rather work fewer hours despite the drop in pay.

Workers shared a common preference for a 35-hour week - though few were achieving it - and a majority would rather have an extra two weeks of holidays than the equivalent pay rise.

Such suggestions may not go down well with your manager, but there is some evidence that employers are beginning to embrace the other major desire expressed in the survey: flexible hours.

''Gradually employers are coming round to the realisation that flexibility is fundamental to well-being at work,'' Kerry Fallon Horgan, from the consultancy Flexible Workplaces, said.

''It is the only way to achieve a balance between family, health, friends and work.''

Ms Fallon Horgan said this could only be achieved through basic shifts in workplace culture, with all employees embracing parental leave and accepting practices such as four-day weeks and working from home.

''The employers who are doing this well have initiated a whole-of-organisation approach - flexible work practices are part of their strategy at every level,'' Ms Fallon Horgan said.

''The best example I've seen is Greenslopes Private Hospital in Brisbane. They've got the wellness centre, the gym, the family-oriented events etc, but they also have the core benefits of family leave.''

Workplace flexibility and happiness at work have become virtually interchangeable within some sections of the workplace literature, but not everyone is convinced.

''Call me a dinosaur if you like, but I wouldn't use flexible working hours as a substitute for well-designed work,'' the associate dean of Sydney University's faculty of economics and business, John Shields, said.

''There's 50 years of research that all points to the fact that the sort of work you do is crucial to how you feel. Essentially, if you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do.

''Do you have discretion or are you basically directed every second of the day? Do you have a variety of tasks? How closely do you work with the workers around you? They are fundamental to work satisfaction and that satisfaction is, in my view, fundamental to being happy at work.''