How to Be Happy at Work When a Good Salary Isn't Enough

As a university professor, I often watched students and young colleagues outgrow their teachers, and it always made me glad. With the people I mentored, I gave everything and asked for everything, and I saw their success as my own. If they ended up doing only as much as I had, I felt we hadn't achieved much. If they did more, we had succeeded. Not everyone around me saw it that way. Like most workplaces, the university was full of hierarchy: people with higher positions and more titles were valued more, and the rest were seen as “just” workers. I never believed that told us anything about how satisfied people were.

Most of us spend around a third of our day at work, for decades. We make friends there, sometimes we even meet our partners there, and yet how often do you hear someone say that their colleagues are impossible and the situation is unbearable? In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness, work belongs to the challenge I called Do What You Love, because the hours we spend working deserve more than endurance.

What does it mean to be happy at work?

Being happy at work doesn't mean being cheerful from nine to five. It means that on most days you feel reasonably well at work, you can see that what you do matters, and you still have energy for your own life when you get home. Every job has hard days. What counts is the overall picture.

If yours doesn't look good right now, you are in very large company. Gallup's latest global survey found that only 20% of employees are engaged at work, 34% are thriving in their lives overall, and 40% experienced a lot of stress the previous day¹.

Why does my job make me feel so unhappy?

Usually not because you are ungrateful or weak. Most often a few basic things are missing: your job leaves you too tired for anything else, you have little say in how you do it, you feel alone or invisible, or you work hard without ever seeing progress. Sometimes it is the way people are treated. When fear, gossip and humiliation become normal, the problem is the culture, not you, and a toxic work culture deserves its own article.

For many women it is also a quiet mismatch: you have become very good at a job you never really chose. If that sounds familiar, how to find your purpose in life may help. And if your unhappiness comes with exhaustion that rest doesn't lift, or a low mood that has lasted for weeks, please talk to a doctor or a mental health professional. That deserves care first.

Others seem big just because you are kneeling

Hierarchy can make you feel small without anyone saying a word. You stop asking questions, you swallow your ideas, you wait for permission. In my book I wrote about how easily we obey authority, and about the moment you decide to stop.

Others seem big just because you are kneeling. Stand up!

Standing up doesn't mean rebellion. It means remembering that your title is not your worth, and neither is anyone else's. In my book I also suggest small, almost playful acts: be as kind and cheerful as you can, wear a cheerful colour on a grey day, dare to be a little different. In my experience kindness at work is contagious, and getting on with people is a skill you can learn, not a talent you either have or don't.

What happiness research says about happiness at work

As an economist who has spent many years studying happiness, I come from a field that began by questioning whether a growing economy automatically means happier people. The same question applies to your job: does a better salary automatically mean a happier working life?

Not entirely. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward examined work and happiness for the World Happiness Report, using surveys from around the world. People in well-paid jobs were happier, but in their words, this is far from being the whole story. Work-life balance came out as perhaps the strongest workplace driver of well-being, and variety, learning new things, autonomy, job security and support from colleagues mattered too².

John Helliwell and Haifang Huang put a price on one of these things. In their analysis, an increase in trust in management of about one tenth of the scale was linked to as much extra life satisfaction as a pay rise of more than 30%³.

Does happiness also change how we work? In laboratory experiments, Andrew Oswald, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi made some volunteers happier, with a short comedy clip or free chocolate, fruit and drinks. Those people were about 12% more productive on a paid task⁴. Real companies point the same way. Across data on almost 1.9 million employees, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Christian Krekel and George Ward found that employee satisfaction went together with higher productivity, more loyal customers and lower staff turnover⁵. That is a link, not proof, but the direction is consistent.

And what makes an ordinary working day good? Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer studied almost 12,000 daily diary entries from 238 professionals in seven companies. On the best days, the most prominent event was making progress in meaningful work, even small progress, while setbacks dominated the worst days⁶. Yet when 669 managers were asked what motivates people most, progress came last⁷.

How to be happy at work: seven gentle steps

You can't change your company's culture on your own. But more is within your reach than it may seem, and small steps repeated every day add up.

1. Protect the edges of your day. Work-life balance may be the strongest workplace driver of well-being. Choose one boundary to keep this month: a time you stop answering messages, or a lunch break away from your desk. If saying no is hard for you, read how to stop people pleasing.
2. Write down one small win every day. Before you leave, note one thing that moved forward, however small. Progress you never notice can't lift you.
3. Craft your job a little. Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton describe how people shape their work by changing their tasks, their relationships at work and the way they think about what they do⁸. Ask for one task that uses your strengths, or hand over one that drains you.
4. Invest in one good relationship at work. Support from colleagues is one of the strongest predictors of well-being at work. Have coffee with someone you like, help without keeping score, and stay out of the gossip.
5. Ask for a little more say. You may not choose your goals, but you can often negotiate how and when you reach them. Ask calmly and specifically.
6. Stop measuring your worth by your title. Notice when you compare yourself with colleagues and feel small. Your value is not on your business card, and neither is anyone else's.
7. Name what you can't fix. If the problem is the culture, the boss or the pay, write it down honestly. Some things improve with a conversation; others are information that it may be time to go.

Happiness at work: what organisations can do

Everything above is in your hands, but much of happiness at work isn't. The research shows where organisations can start: workloads that leave room for a life, trust in management, real support between colleagues, a say in decisions and the chance to see progress. Perks are pleasant, but none of the research I have described is about perks. Today you will hear about psychological safety, employee wellbeing and even chief happiness officers. The names change; the foundations stay the same.

In my book I wrote about mayors in the United States who survey their citizens' happiness every year and shape local policy with them. People are mostly thrilled that someone, often for the first time, asks them how they feel and think. Employees are no different.

Happiness at work rarely arrives with a new title or a bigger salary. It grows from how your days feel: whether you have a life outside work, people you can trust and the sense that you are moving forward. If you want company on that path, my programme Permission for Life is about exactly this: permission to live your own life, at work too. And if you lead a team or an organisation, through The Institute of Happiness, which I founded in 2017, I give talks and workshops on happiness at work.