Download Construct the Model of Employees’ Happiness Index

Construct the Model of Employees’ Happiness Index
YANG Hongjuan
LI Jia
School of Management and Economics, Kunming University of Science and Technology,
P.R.China, 650093
[email protected]
Abstract: In this paper, with the idea of Gross National Happiness Index, we proposed the concept of
employees’ happiness index. And the factors that influence employees’ happiness index have been
analyzed here. We also discussed the measuring scale and the various indicators of the employees’
happiness index. At the same time, the model of employee happiness index has been constructed.
Key words: human resources management, employees’ happiness index, model
1 Introduction
In recent years, the "happiness index" has become a hot topic in academia at home and abroad,
meantime some government departments view it as practical issues. Regarding the initial research of
happiness can be traced back to Plato the ancient Greek philosopher. In the end of 18 century, the
founder of Britain utilitarianism ethics Bentham believed that happy can be measured by balancing the
joyful and painful emotion which people experienced. In the 1970s, Jigme Singye Wang-chuck the
Bhutan's King first proposed the concept of Gross National Happiness Index, he thought that the policy
should pay attention to happiness, and should aim to achieve happiness and the basic question of life is
how to maintain the balances between the material life (including the benefits of science and technology)
and the spiritual life. Under the guidance of this governance idea, Bhutan creatively proposed “gross
national happiness" (GNH) Index which composed by four levels: the good governances, the economic
growth, the cultural development and the environmental protection. Since then, it has initiated
widespread research on national happy index by various countries. Britain established the Measure of
Domestic Progress (MDP) and Japan uses Gross National Cool (GNC).
In October 2004, Guodong Cheng the president of Lanzhou Branch of Chinese Academy of
Sciences led a "trio" and began to study on how to establish the accounting system of nationals’
happiness. During the two sessions in 2005, the CPPCC member and the CAS academician Cheng
Guodong submitted a proposal that entitled "Realization ‘people-oriented’, Calculation ‘National Happy
Index’ ”. September 12, 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics pointed out that China launched
happiness index. This news caused by a great concern of the community, how to construct this index,
and can the index be an effective indicator to response people's living conditions become a focus of
discussion.
At present, the happiness index has been studied in a macro domain and it belongs to the areas of
macroeconomics. However, this paper put it on a micro domain
enterprise to study. The paper
explored the concept of employees’ happiness index, discussed the indicators of employees’ happiness
index, and constructed the model of employees’ happiness index.
——
2 The concept of employees’ happiness index
，
Gross National Happiness Index or calls gross national happiness. GDP (gross domestic product)
and GNP (gross national product) are criteria to measures national wealth and people’s richness. Then
the happiness index used to measuring people own feelings and experience of their own living and
development condition, that is an index of people’s sense of happiness.
In the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, the measurement of people’s subjective well-being became a
hot research in psychology. Psychologists discuss the subjective well-being most of time from the
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following three subjects: quality of life, mental health and social gerontology. As sociologists and
economists join to the study of well-being rich content and form of expression of well-being have been
revealed more. It should be said that sense of happiness as part of a system of social and psychological
effected by many complex factors, including: economic factors such as employment status, income
levels and so on; social factors such as education level, marital quality and so on; population factors
such as gender, age, etc; Cultural factors such as values, traditions and customs, etc; psychological
factors such as national character, self-esteem, attitude to life, personality, achievement motivation;
political factors such as the right to democracy, participation opportunities and so on.
In addition, understanding to subjective well-being also concerns many aspects, including cognitive
and emotional, individual and groups, horizontal and vertical, time point and period, and so on. The
close relation those between the subjective well-being and social psychological system factors and
levels, the followings are very unique and important:
(1) Psychological reference frame. On the social level, social members’ well-being will be affected by
their psychological reference frame. For example, in a closed society, due to lack of comparison
with other sociality, although the society's material development level is not high, they lack of
comparison with others and then they are a happy person, they do not show a low sense of
happiness; However, in an open society, people have to face external shocks from developed
society. There are more external references. Therefore, the well-being of its members may show a
downward trend, because at this time their original self-esteem may hurt.
(2) The degree of achievement motivation. People's achievement need determine their level of
achievement motivation, the level of incentive achievement determines to their expected vision and
goals. And the level of people’s consciousness to achieve is important. If people realize that their
achievements are higher than their anticipated ambition and aspiration, they will have a strong
sense of happiness. Otherwise, if people realize that their own achievement level is lower than their
anticipated ambition or goals, there will be no happiness at all.
(3) Ontological sense of security. It means that the continuity of individual self-identification and the
confidence to their social environment. This sense of reliability stems from person and things and it
is extremely important to formulate an individuals’ sense of trust. A sense of trust to the outside
world that is not only the foundation of individuals’ sense of security but also the basis of
subjective well-being through individuals resisting anxiety. Therefore, there is no simple
correlation between their well-beings and economic status or income level. In realistic, the poor
people’s sense of happiness is not low, but some millionaires are day-long worried.
The happiness index view the subjective well-being as an indicator, through using the specialized
measure tools to get the quantification result of people's subjective well-being. Employees’ happiness
index can be used to measure employee’s feelings and experience inside the enterprises which are
work-related activities, as well as outside enterprises which are in various aspects of life but nothing to
do with the work. That is an index of sense of employees’ happiness inside and outside the process of
business activities. Employees’ happiness index can reveal staff’s situation and problems no matter in
business activities or in personal life. In business activities, the emotional feelings of well-being that
emotional levels often occupy a leading position, well-being is a very subjective individual area.
Therefore, in practice, the employee’s happiness index can be used to measure the degree of
"people-oriented" in the process of human resources management in enterprises. Improving the index
can avoid high material paying.
，
3 Construct the model of employees’ happiness index
3.1 Establish the scale structure
Employees’ happiness index should classify all aspects that affect employee’s happiness. The more
detailed categories, the results of comprehensive measurement are better. However, due to the feasibility
of implementation, we should screen on various factors. It is necessary to follow certain principles:
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(1) Completeness. Analysis all the aspects that influence employee’s work activities
comprehensively. Fully analyze the impact of well-being in a system perspective. Although it is
impossible to completely sum up all aspects, we should seek perfection as far as possible. The
important factors cannot be short.
(2) Independence. Each influencing factor should maintain mutual independence. That is each factor
should have clear and independent meaning respectively from other factor in the same level and in
order to avoid repeated metering.
(3) Feasibility. The object of investigation statistics is people. So they maybe recognize unclearly to
certain aspects of the issue and express ambiguously or even take taboo attitude. Therefore the
chosen factors must be easy to investigate directly or transfer inquiry form or use other factors.
(4) Universality. The happiness index needs to investigate all the employees in a company. But there
are different factors influencing individuals. We should choose factors which influence the
well-being of majority employees, so that the index is of representative and applicable.
(5) Pointed. Along with the change of space and time, meter's structure of investigation needs to adjust
correspondingly, adapt to different investigation object and improve the accuracy of measurement.
In different enterprises, the factors that affect employees’ happiness index are quite different. Even
if the same factors, the weights that affect the index are also different. Therefore, every enterprise should
design investigation meter according to their actual situation.
First, the indicators and measuring scale of employees’ happiness index should be established. And
then we take this as an example to construct the model of employees’ happiness index. As shown in
Table 1:
Table 1 Measurement scale of Employees’ happiness index and indicators
Business or work promote
staff’s
social status
Employees’
First-level
Second-level
indicator
(Uin) U41
sense
of
Business or work bring confidence to staff U42
indicator
Ui
happiness
in
The trust from colleagues and friends make you feel happy
the Items
U43
Weight
Items
community
(Pi)
The relationship between colleagues is harmony U44
U4
Physical
and
Staff's interest or hobby or special skill display in the
good personal connection with friends U45
mental health
enterprise (U11)
May
help from
when encounter
of Employees
Staff get
at present
in acompany
good condition
in work (Udifficulties
12)
U
46 have the rich leisure entertainment in the enterprises
(U1)
Staffs
Can
Self-rea
(U1) obtain sufficient respects from others U51
lization
Anticipate
to a good
future free
U52time besides study and
The staffs have
sufficient
U5
Compared
majorities,
work in thewith
enterprise
(U13)staff is more advantageous or
superior
U53ability to adapt to new environment (U14)
have
a strong
Be confident
Age
(U15) to achieve ones goal U54
（ ）
（ ）
The
indicators
of
employees
happiness
index U
（）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
Staff’s
material
conditions
out
Family
oflife U6
enterprises
U2
（ ）
（ ）
Employee
Satisfactory
Degree U3
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
Be satisfy
with
confident
in their
workcurrent
and lifeincome
U55 and expenditure U21
Their
pay
in
accordance
to
the
harvest U22
Qualification U56
Be satisfy
housing
conditions
which
provided
Does
workwith
affect
the commonly
family
life
U61 by
enterprise
U23 on the relationship among family
Does
work impact
Be satisfy with
members
U62 the guarantee system which provided by
enterprise U24
Be satisfy with the opportunity provided by enterprise and
community U25
The satisfaction degree of working condition U31
The satisfaction degree of work itself U32
The satisfaction degree of payment U33
The satisfaction degree of interpersonal relation U34
The satisfaction degree of the whole enterprise U35
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
877
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
Weight
(Pin)
3.2 Implementation and investigation of employees’ happiness index
After establishing the scale structure, we can design questionnaire to survey happiness index base
on it. We mainly measure two important variables in the questionnaire: Value U (the point of influencing
factors) and value P (the weight of each influencing factors).
Design the indicators which used to measuring employee’s happiness index to specific questions.
The answers to these questions are very unhappy, unhappy, normal, happy, and very happy-five levels or
rank. And each level corresponds with a point. As Table 2 shows.
level
point
5 is perfect
Table 2 point and level of evaluation to employees’ happiness index
very
unhappy
normal
happy
unhappy
1
2
3
4
very happy
5
(2) In practice, P-value mainly determined by peoples’ experience. We should not only listen to the
experts’ suggestion, but also seek the opinion of staffs. As shown in the table below.
Indicators
Weights
，∑
U1
P1
Table 3 the weights of first-level indicators
,
U2
Ui
,
P2
Pi
…
…
…
…
Un
Pn
And
Pi=1. The above table takes example of the first-level measuring indicators, the same as the
second-level indicators.
4 Measurement of the employees’ happiness index
After extracting the influencing factors and establishing the measuring structure, the statistical
model can be constructed. We generally use the mathematical model of linear regression. Namely:
H=p1u1 +p2u2+p3u3…p (H
happiness index, U
the influencing indicator P
Weight)
And U=pi1ui1 +pi2ui2 … +pinuin. This is the second-level indicators’ model. Suppose we get value-U and
value-P though questionnaires as follows.
——
First-lev
el indicator
Ui
Items
——
， ——
Table 4 the simplified measuring scale of employee’s happiness index
The satisfaction
degree ofindicator
the whole
enterprise U35
Second-level
(Uin)
（ ）
0.2
，
3
（ ）
Physical
and
mental
health
of
Employees
(U1)
Employee
Satisfactory
Degree
U3
（ ）
Wei
ght (Pi)
0.3
0.7
Items
Staff's interest or hobby or special skill display in the
enterprise (U11)
Staff at present in a good condition in work (U12)
Staffs have the rich leisure entertainment in the
enterprises (U1)
The staffs have sufficient free time besides study and
work in the enterprise (U13)
have a strong ability to adapt to new environment (U14)
Age (U15)
The satisfaction degree of working condition U31
The satisfaction degree of work itself U32
The satisfaction degree of payment U33
The satisfaction degree of interpersonal relation U34
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
（ ）
878
Wei
ght (Pin)
0.1
V
alue-U
2
0.25
0.2
4
2
0.35
3
0.05
0.05
0.15
0.2
0.35
0.1
3
4
4
3
3
2
Can be calculated as following: U1 =0.1*2+0.25*4+0.2*2+0.35*3+0.05*3+0.05*4=3
U3 =0.15*4+0.2*3+0.35*3+0.1*2+0.2*3=3.05
h =0.3*3+0.7*3.05=3.035
If all indicators’ points are perfect, we can get that
H=[0.3*(0.1*5+0.25*5+0.2*5+0.35*5+0.05*5+0.05*5)+0.6*(0.15*5+0.2*5+0.35*5+0.1*5+0.2*5)]
=5
Therefore we can get the relative value of happiness index h/H=3.035/5=0.607, i.e. the happiness
index is more the half slightly, means a little happy. While obtained happiness index we also obtained
the point of influencing factors and the weight. In the assumptions of Table 4, company can clearly
understand their own drawbacks. Therefore company can make corresponding judgments to improve
themselves. And then promote the development of enterprises.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, we explore the concept of employees’ happiness index and point out the parts factors
that affect it. And then we construct the model of employees’ happiness index. The deficiency of this
paper is that the happiness index has been simplified. Actually, it is very difficult to measure subjective
well-being comprehensively and accurately. There is a key question questions lying behind the
measurement: whether the feeling and experience that people express on a time point can represent
people’s overall feeling in a period of time. The model of employees’ happiness index we established in
this paper just based on the linear model, the non-linear model or structural equation also can be used to
calculate happiness index. This needs further discussion. At the same time, the survey to the sense of
happiness has been explored for dozens of years by the west psychologist, sociologists and economist
and so on. Certain knowledge and experience has been accumulated. However, there is no kind of tool
that measuring sense of happiness obtains the general acceptance, many scales are still improving. In a
word, to design a set of tools for measuring sense of happiness which can reflect international standard
and conform Chinese national condition, and particularly to obtain a employees’ happiness index as
enterprise’s policy reference, are till need to a high standard and innovative multi-disciplinary
cooperation research.
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