What Makes Millennials Happy in their Workplace?

Abstract

Happiness in the workplace remains to be an under-researched field which is unfortunate considering that the happiness-productive worker link has been strongly established. More essentially, there has been a lack of research on happiness in the workplace which considers a specific sample of millennials. In preparation for a workforce dominated with millennials, this research will help address the gap with regards to the lack of research on Malaysian millennials’ happiness in the workplace. Through a thorough literature review, six predictors or antecedents of happiness in the workplace among millennials which are meaningful work, work autonomy, transformational leadership, workplace friendship, work life balance, and gratitude have been chosen in this research. This study consists of millennials (“millennials” or Generation Y is defined in the selected literature as individuals born between years 1982 and 2004) who have undergone full time employment of at least one year or more. The results indicated that all the six predictors showed significant moderate to high positive relationships with happiness in the workplace. Multiple regression analysis showed that all six predictors significantly predicts millennials’ happiness in the workplace, besides gratitude. Implications of this study with regards to managing millennial talent in organisations are then discussed.

How to Measure the Happy-Productive Worker Thesis

“…The most common ways of operationalising the construct of happiness mentioned in HPW's thesis have been: affections [5,25,28,29,36], well-being [20, 29,33,35,48,49], subjective or psychological well-being [4,20,22,30,35,37,48,49], happiness [16,37,45,50] and satisfaction, both with life and at a professional level [4,5,20,21,25,28,29,33,35,36,45,50,51]. However, there are also others such as motivations [50,52], organisational commitment [50], and engagement [36,50].…”

Workplace affective well-being: gratitude and friendship in helping millennials to thrive at work

“…Friendships at work may allow millennial employees to have more positive experiences in the workplace, thereby leading to increased AWB and happiness. Further, Yap and Badri (2020) have also argued that workplace friendships might hold higher importance to millennials, as this generation could view relationships at work as an extension of their family, as opposed to boomers who might perceive work relationships as merely transactional. A possibility for this could be due to millennials having a higher likelihood to be still single as compared to boomers (Yap and Badri, 2020), which increases the possibility of them seeking for connections and friendships at work.…”

“…As a unique individual resource, various scholars have highlighted the unique psychological benefits associated with the emotional and social functions of friendships in the workplace. Yap and Badri (2020) found that friendships at work promoted AWB among millennials. Accordingly, we expect that millennial workers’ feelings of gratitude in the workplace will influence their friendships at work, which, in turn, will influence their well-being and happiness.…”

“…Current research suggests that millennial employees are likely to accrue significant personal psychological benefits at work by experiencing significant control and autonomy over their work (Gallie, 2007; Yap and Badri, 2020), being a part of dynamic teams, expecting support from colleagues and receiving individual attention from their managers (Sirota and Klein, 2013). Equally important may be the experience of positive emotions, feelings and relations with colleagues in the work environment (Guest, 1998; Baptiste, 2008).…”

The Study of Working Engagement and Working Environment towards Job Happiness in the Malaysian Hotel Industry

“…'Quality of work life' and 'workplace happiness' are proven and known to have a positive relationship (Rasli, et al, 2017). Yap and Badri (2020) in their study have found that the working environment is one of the main antecedents to employee job happiness. In other works, by Jamal and Budke (2020) suggested that organizational culture, which is assumed to be part of the working environment, can also foster job happiness among employees.…”