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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 875 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: 876 (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. Reference [1]Arménio Rego, Miguel Pina e Cunha. 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