A Day in the Life of a Happy Worker

Citation

Mina Beigi (2013), "A Day in the Life of a Happy Worker", European Journal of Training and Development, Vol. 37 No. 8, pp. 779-781. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-05-2013-0063

A Day in the Life of a Happy Worker is an edited collection on daily experiences of well-being in work settings. Bakker and Daniels, who have backgrounds in work and organisational psychology and organisational behavior, divide the book into two sections: theoretical (Chapters 2-5) and methodological (Chapters 6-10). In the first chapter, the editors provide an overview of the book and helpfully narrow down the reader ' s focus from positive psychology to well-being states.

In Chapter 2, “The episodic structure of life at work”, Beal and Weiss concentrate on the work day and its episodic structure. The chapter defines episodes and performance episodes, and emphasises the role of allocation and regulation of attention in making performance episodes effective. The authors discuss various elements of the stream of experience and try to answer some fundamental questions regarding how individuals perceive and structure experiences. The chapter theoretically justifies studying the working day and how it might help understand workplace behavior.

In Chapter 3, “State work engagement”, Xanthopoulou and Bakker focus on within-person fluctuations in job engagement. The authors define work engagement, review measurement scales for work engagement and compare enduring and state work engagement. The chapter reviews antecedents of work engagement, its relationship with performance and some related research. In Chapter 4, “Work-related flow”, Fullagar and Kelloway have a similar discussion on flow. This chapter discusses preconditions and dimensionality as well as the physiology of flow. In addition, the authors discuss the antecedents and consequences of work-related flow.

In Chapter 5, “Job characteristics and problem-solving”, Daniels has a dynamic view towards job characteristics and shows how this view can help improve employee well-being. Unlike traditional views toward job design, the author considers employee ' s agency and active role in crafting her/his own work. The chapter reviews some recent findings of related research.

In Chapter 6, “The application of diary methods to examine worker ' s daily recovery during off-job time”, Binnewies and Sonnentang provide readers with an overview of diary research methods which are suitable for studying within-person variations in workplace. Then the authors provide a good example of application of diary research focusing on different aspects of worker recovery.

In Chapter 7, “Experience sampling and event-sampling research”, Dimotakis and Ilies discuss experience-sampling method (ESM), which can help explore within-person processes. The chapter sheds light on the basic characteristics of the method, provides examples of the studies which put this method into practice, and finally discusses its advantages and disadvantages. In Chapter 8, “Reconstruction methods”, Hertel and Stamov-Robnagel introduce an additional method which can be used in capturing workers ' momentary experience. The chapter outlines the rational for the method and then explains the method and its two variants in detail.

In Chapter 9, “Latent growth modeling applied to diary data”, Gross, Meier and Semmer introduce latent growth models (LGM) method which enables researchers to study the within-person changes and also the change patterns over time. The authors use an exemplary set of data to explain LGM in detail and also discuss how this method can be applied to diary studies.

In Chapter 10, “Using qualitative diary research to understand emotion at work”, Waddington explores an individual ' s daily experience at workplace through the lens of qualitative diaries. The author explains diary research, elaborates on its strengths and weaknesses and then discusses the ethical and methodological issues concerning the method. Totterland, Holman and Niven wrap up the book with providing implicit themes in the previous chapters. The chapter also suggests a possible research agenda based on temporal aspects of happiness and factors that give rise to happiness.

Evaluation

A Day in the Life of a Happy Worker provides an invaluable collection of recent studies and methods related to daily fluctuations in workers well-being. As Christopher Clegg (cited in the back cover of the book) puts it, it is “a book that takes ‘time’ seriously”.

The book is useful for researchers and students from a variety of disciplines including organisational psychology, organisational behavior and human resource development. Researchers, who study workplace phenomena and seek to gain insights into these topics of interest in a dynamic manner, can extensively benefit from the book. Graduate students in related disciplines searching for their dissertation topics would find the book useful as well. Practitioners interested in gaining a deeper knowledge about the reasons why employees show different levels of engagement, motivation or other positive organisational variables will find the book helpful.

In my opinion, the book title is not thoroughly reflexive of the book content. A glance at the topic suggests that the book walks the reader step by step through a typical day of a happy worker. While the book does provide theoretical discussions and research methods which justify and help study a single day of a happy worker, it does not provide a description of the day. Adding a subtitle could help the audience form realistic expectations of the book.

Furthermore, I believe if the chapters followed a similar template, it would be easier for the readers to organise their thoughts on the topics covered in each chapter. This would simplify the reading process and would also avoid repetitions. Although different chapters focus on different topics, some redundancy exists in justifying the importance and relevancy of studying the worker daily experience at workplace.

In the author's own words

[…] we need to look at short-term, within-person fluctuations in happiness and its consequences. Such an approach acknowledges that individuals who are generally happy with their job and engaged in their work may not be equally happy every day. Indeed, an increasing number of studies has shown that daily fluctuations in job satisfaction and work engagement are considerable, and that these fluctuations can be predicted and be used to predict important employee and organizational outcomes. Moreover, it is conceivable that short-term indicators (or within-person changes) of occupational well-being are better predictors of performance in organizations than long-term indicators (between-person differences) (p. 2)

About the Reviewer

Mina Beigi earned her doctorate degree in Human Resource Management from Allameh Tabatabaee University in Tehran, Iran in 2008. She has worked as an assistant professor at University of Tehran and as a visiting assistant professor at Sharif University of Technology. She is now seeking her second PhD degree in Human Resource Development in Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas. Her current research interests include training and development, work-family conflict and narrative in organisations.