Should work make us happy?
Hmm. I should say yes — I write frequently about ideas suggesting workplace culture should be more encouraging and supportive than it often is. Most people spend the majority of their waking hours working, and work shouldn’t be a depressing place to be.
But I’m not sure work is a place where we should expect to be happy. Managers in particular probably cannot make people happy at work all of the time.
Not that they should make people miserable, either. So let’s say you want to know if you make your co-workers happy. Here’s a test developed by the Chief Happiness Officer, Alexander Kjerulf. You have to be a Facebook user to take the test. Commenters on his post suggest that using Facebook is a flawed delivery strategy, because people won’t have the co-workers they hate on their friends list. It may be all the more revealing for that lack. It only lets you choose 12 people, so you may not get a good pool, either.
