What Factors Impact Overall Happiness In The Workplace

A month or so ago my son Conrad who is attending SDSU asked me to post a link to a survey that his marketing research class needed inputs on.

You can find the original post on Linked In.

The team created a PDF of the results that I'd like to share via this link (pdf download).

Here is their Executive Summary:

In this report, we sought to understand what type of working environment would lead to greater overall happiness in individuals. In order to dive deeper into this topic, we did extensive research on different working styles within the US as well as other countries. We also researched how COVID-19 may have affected the way individuals view working and how working from home may affect the way individuals choose to work going forward.

After gathering our research, we constructed a 16-question survey to better understand individuals' demographics, attitudes towards working, and their current levels of satisfaction and happiness at their current jobs. Our research questions targeted asking about different work style preferences such as working completely in person, working completely online, or having a hybrid work style. We also asked individuals about their current work type status such as part-time, full time or unemployed, as well as their education level. We also incorporated questions asking about individuals' current levels of happiness and whether or not they are satisfied working at their current job or satisfied with the current amount of money they make.

We ran multiple extensive SPSS analysis to include: descriptive (for the mean, standard deviation, and frequency), associative (bivariate correlation), differences (one-way anova), and predictive (simple regression).

From the data results, we conclude that there is a weak positive correlation between age and happiness. The older a person is, the somewhat happier they are likely to be at their job. We also found a weak positive relationship between the older you are and the less likely you are to leave your current job. The rest of our research questions involving: pay in monetary form, education level, and work schedule, all have inconclusive effects on happiness. This means there is no clear pay level, level of education, or work schedule that has a greater effect on one's happiness.