Happiness The dark downside of our pursuit of happiness at work

Happiness The dark downside of ur pursuit of happiness at workHappiness The dark downside of our pursuit of happiness at workTheres a lot of talk about the importance of happiness at work.But what if happiness is the wrong goal? Could it be distracting us from more essentialdemands?Ladders spoke with Ruth Whippman, the author ofAmerica the Anxious How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks, about the downside of our happiness agenda and what we should be focused on instead.Ladders Are we focused too much on happiness at work? WhippmanTheres recently been this huge push for employers to promote a happiness agenda in the workplace. You landsee it across all kinds of different companies.In Silicon Valley, you see the extremes of it, where they have meditation gurus and Ping-Pong tables and video-game arcades, and all of these things in the workplace to keep people happy.Companies are setting up chief happiness officers and chief mindfulness officers and sending their staff tohappiness trainingand personal development courses.Theres been a real blurring of the lines between work and self.A decade ago, we expected our jobs to beour jobs. We did them for money, and we got paid, and then we went home again. Leisure and sense of self wereoutside the workplace. Now, were putting all those things inside the workplace.The trend of work-life integration has replaced work-life balance.It sounds great in theory, the idea that our life and our work should all be one meaningful thing.But it can become problematic, and its not particularly healthy.It actually means that we have very little leisure time and very little space in our minds when were not answering emailsor on our phones. Its a crossing of a line betweenwhat really should be the business of our employers and what is our own business.Why is happiness the wrong goal?One of the problems with the whole happiness agenda in the workforce is that it can lead to a kind of exploitation, where the lin es have been so blurred between work and home life that it ends up meaning that were at work all the time.Theres this real culture of overwork in the U.S. In this culture, commitment means you work extremely long hours and you want to be with your colleagues 24/7.But healthy boundaries are absolutely critical.Theres lots of research that shows that longer hours dont make for more productive employees. But Im hesitant to justify it in terms of productivity.It seems like every time anyone wants to have leisure in this country, theyhave to justify it as a productivity hack - as if its not a valid thing in and of itself to want to not be at work sometimes. That speaks volumes about the values in this country.How are employers taking advantage of our pursuit of happiness?Theres this whole language of self-actualization that employers use with their staff.Millennials have grown up with a very strong message follow your passion, do what you love, be yourself, be authentic, find a job that s meaningful to you.That message hastaken the dignity out of the idea that you have a job that you do for money. Thatused to respectable, butit almost sounds tawdry if you mention it today.Its also made employeesvulnerable. Some employers are paying employeesin self-actualization rather than in money. For example, some people do endless internships that go on for years.In low-income jobs, theyre bringing in that saatkorn rhetoric, and it can be a real cover for exploitation.Nobody has a normal job title anymore. You work at Starbucks, and youre a partner. You work for Disney as a janitor, but actually youre a cast member.All these things make it sound like the workplace is offering you a meaningful experience. But at the same time, wages has ben suppressed since the 70s.Youre being paid with fulfillment, rather than actual cash and benefits.Some employers are offeringbeer and Ping Pong and mindfulness classes and the title of champion, but arent givingemployeespaid vacation or healt h care benefits or raises.Those are the things you should be looking forin a job. Everything else is a smoke screen.What should we do instead?Its unfair to say that employees should be the ones leading the charge against overwork. Its employers who need to be setting the tone and saying go home, take a vacation, and offering their staff vacation and benefits and enough pay that they can afford to do that.Corporate social responsibility should involve a companys own staff as much as it does donating to nonprofits.For employees, its about setting boundaries on your time. Obviously, the more senior you areand the more clout you have in your workplace, the easier it is to do.Its also about taking some of the companys offerings with a grain of salt. Ask for important things like vacation benefits, health care, and a reasonable wage, and see all these add-ons as what they are.Thoseextra may be nice to have if everything else is in place, but theyre not a priority.