At the Office, Coaching Happiness

With job satisfaction in the dumps, the field of positive psychology is booming in the workplace.

Bear through this gloom and doom. It has a silver lining.

The Conference Board's annual survey on employee satisfaction brings us gloomy news: Employees are more dissatisfied than they've ever been since the Board started tallying the stats 23 years ago. Only 45 percent of US employees report being happy at work, a precipitous drop from the 61 percent who were happy in 1987 when the survey started. A rock-bottom 35.7 percent of those below age 25 are satisfied with their work life at present.

Employers are, as you might think, concerned about this downward trend. It's no surprise, then, that the field of "positive psychology" has exploded lately, producing ever-more books and MBA classes to help managers learn techniques for boosting morale in the office, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Bosses are sending "happiness coaches" in to offices to offer employees ideas for fending off negative thinking, such as meditation and expressing gratitude. Some of the suggestions workers might hear? Write appreciative e-mails to co-workers, practice random acts of kindness, journal about the good things in their lives, compliment other people and generally be more like Flanders from the Simpsons. Okely dokely!

Some, like author Barbara Ehrenreich, criticize this focus on inner-happiness as a method of avoiding problems that need to be addressed. It is certainly possible to see the whole thing as a ploy by employers to shift the responsibility for job satisfaction entirely onto the employee and away from themselves.

In the past managers have focused more on practical rewards such as salary, bonuses, promotions and kudos to keep people's spirits up. But the flagging economy makes it harder to extend such things, leaving employers scrabbling for ways of allaying foul moods.

So can a coaching session that involves journal-writing assignments really fix what ails today's employees? Anything is possible, and the Wall Street Journal does quote someone who took the lesson to heart. Ivelisse Rivera, a physician at Community Health Center in Middletown, Connecticut, told the Journal that the coaching session made her think. "If I assume a negative attitude and complain all the time, whoever is working with me is going to feel the same way," she said. On the flip side, maybe something as simple as assuming a positive attitude will make coworkers feel the same way, too.

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