On 20 March 2014, the International Day of Happiness, Pharrell Williams joined the UN Foundation to encourage the world to send in their versions of his song, Happy. During the 24 hours of Happiness campaign, more than a thousand video tributes flooded in.
I joined in by asking GSB readers to take part in a happiness-at-work survey, and over 500 responded. With the results in, I can reveal what happiness at work means to you.
The Happiness at Work Survey was designed to give instant feedback on an individual's happiness at work and a picture of a whole group's happiness. With this survey, the unique factor was that each person taking the survey was a Guardian reader.
Some interesting patterns emerged – especially on comparing what I've called "the Guardian 500" with the rest of the UK's working population.
It's not all a happy song. Only 38% of you are happy at work, which is slightly less than the UK average of 40%. In fact it's male Guardian readers who seem to be bringing down the scores with only 30% happy at work.
Age also played its part, with a typical decline in happiness for people at the mid-life marker. These patterns can also be seen across the UK's working population. However, workers under 25 are on the whole much less happy than their Guardian-reading counterparts.
For me, the most interesting finding from the survey was a reminder of the British economist E F Schumacher's famous insight: small is beautiful. Not only that: small is happy.
People working in micro-businesses with fewer than 10 people are the happiest. Among the Guardian 500, 64% of people working in micro-businesses are happy at work, compared with an average across all sizes of businesses of just 38%. So Guardian readers working in micro-business are nearly twice as likely to be happy at work than the national average. While the same result is also reflected in the whole UK population, it's not quite as pronounced.
But what else matters when it comes to happiness at work? Doing good feels good.
People generally feel happier at work when they can see that their work is benefiting others. People who felt their jobs really benefited society (42%) were much more likely to be happy at work (59%, compared with the average of 38%).
Autonomy is also great for happiness. Being yourself at work, being able to influence decisions and shape your work are crucial to your happiness. In fact the most autonomous were nearly always happy at work (81%). While this is a well-known driver of happiness at work, it is an even stronger influence among the Guardian 500.
Perhaps Pharrell could put the results to music: happiness, at least in a work context, is about keeping it small, being autonomous and doing good.
The challenge is to build human and humane organisations that create a powerful sense of smallness whatever their size, and empower their employees to feel, and indeed be, influential.
That's a tune we could all enjoy dancing to, even at work.
Nic Marks, founder of Happiness Works.
The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here.
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox
