The Complex Relationship Between Healthiness, Happiness
and Productivity in the Workplace
By Samuel Höög
It is a Thursday afternoon; I feel unfocused and distracted. 45 minutes later after
a 30-minute run and a cold shower, I feel like a new person – unstoppable and full
of happiness and productivity. Going for a run seems to be the ultimate cure for
me, yielding such a large amount of happiness, healthiness and productivity.
However, a couple of hours later I experienced hunger and lack of motivation, and
the happiness has declined. It makes me wonder if the short-term effects of
exercises, shopping, drinking alcohol, spending time with loved ones, or sleeping,
that results in a happy, healthy and a productive life. Well, this a subjective
proposition, but searching for an answer in scientific journals may give some
understanding and evidence on how the relationships between healthiness,
happiness and productivity functions. While it may initially seem obvious that
happiness and healthiness correlate with productivity, further exploration
suggests that happiness does not necessarily equate to productivity, nor does
healthiness.
The Healthy Worker
The corporate athletes are exponentially growing and the idea of an overweight, or
even a non-typical body type, is considered a “badge of shame”, as Nilofer Merchant
argues. The two fitness-trainers who become management advisers also argue that
to be at your “ideal performance state” the executives need to mimic life as a
professional athlete. Train, eat healthy, drink water regularly, establish sleep
regimes and stay mentally focused to visualize moments of peak performance, will
help the executives to perform better with more persistent passion. Further, this
has become a trend, and many companies encourage their employees to stay fit
and healthy. For instance, some have used the so-called treadmill desk so ensure
that employees stay active regardless of the workload. As a result, the
differentiability between work and exercise erodes and blurs out the leisure
exercise time (Cederström and Spicer, 2015). A time that could be used as a battery
recharge to come back stronger and more productive. However, even if it may seem
as the treadmill desk is a brilliant and effective exercise idea, Zygmunt Bauman
points out that this fitness obsession rather may result in negative effects, such as
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“perpetual self-scrutiny, self-reproach and self-deprecation, and so also of
continuous anxiety” (Cederström and Spicer, 2015).
Nevertheless, in the mind of the executives, the corporate fitness boom is
considered as an advantage and contributes to more committed employees. But
also, as the evidence from the Illinois workplace found out, that the employees who
participated in the “iThrive” program showed lower medical spending and
healthier behaviors compared to the non-participants (Jones et al, 2019). However,
these effects were not due to the participation, but rather of the fact that the
participants already were the healthier employees. Thus, one can argue that these
wellness-programs should investigate the effects on low-income employees with
high healthcare spending and poor health habits, in order to find significant
effects. Further, the evidence from the research suggests that companies and
managers may screen their workforce by implementing a wellness program in
order to select the employees with better health habits to save medical spending
and reduce costs (Jones et al, 2019).
Maybe the focus on our healthy lifestyle is just a made-up industry. All these new
innovations, such as the treadmill desk, may be an effective way for entrepreneurs
to influence the employees and executives around the globe by planting the idea of
fitness-workers in their minds. Looking closer at wellness-programs and
innovations such as the treadmill desk, Cederström and Spicer (2015) argue that
the estimates of wellness programs are often overestimated. One explanation for
why companies are enthusiastic about corporate workouts is that making
employees attend fitness routines helps a company create and sculpt the
workforce, even though it may not have significant effects on wellbeing and
productivity (Cederström and Spicer, 2015).
A study made by Kathleen D. Vohs and Andrew C. Hafenbrack (2018) investigates
the relationship between mindfulness and motivation in the workplace. A quite
surprising result, showing that the meditation rather made the employees less
motivated and spent less time and effort on assessments. It seems that the striving
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of a healthy, both physically and mentally, employee is counterproductive, and the
focus is rather on the human being outside of work than directly connected to the
actual improvements of performance and productivity.
Considering these findings there is no obvious relationship between healthiness
and productiveness, despite the claims of the two fitness trainers who resettled as
management advisors.
Is the relationship rather reversed? Glancing over the article covering the Foxconn
scandals, these employees were extremely productive, or at least worked endless
hours. From the executives- and the board point of view these employees,
regardless of how tragic it may seem, were always just bricks on a board who could
be abused (Tam, 2009). A smoking, drinking, and amphetamine addict may be a
more productive worker than a fitness-freak-employee. And as it may seem as
these workers are replaceable and as it is displayed in the article about Foxconn,
these workers who at extremes took their own life where simply replaced
immediately by other who, with no hesitation, wanted the same role. It becomes
more and more philosophical as the analyses of the relationship between
healthiness and productivity gets deeper and deeper.
The Happy Worker
24/7 capitalism is growing rapidly, and many employees are seen as a 24/7 asset.
Crary (2013), discusses the 24/7 capitalism and points out how the military
attempts to explore the scientific possibilities of how much the sleep of humans can
be reduced, in a quest to achieve a super-efficient soldier. Further, he argues that
profound uselessness and intrinsic passivity causes losses in production time,
circulation, and consumption, and sleep collides with the demands of a 24/7universe. This has resulted in an almost five-hour decrease in sleeping time
compared to the early twentieth century. Crary continues and describes how
sleeplessness hastening the exhaustion of life and the depletion of resources. And
as Marx called it “natural barriers”, sleep may be the only obstacle to the
progression of 24/7 capitalism (Crary, 2013).
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Sleep and sleeplessness may be a key factor to productivity, happiness and
healthiness. As many studies show, a balanced sleep regime contributes to a
healthier and happier lifestyle and enables the body to prevent infectious diseases,
the occurrence and progression of several major medical illnesses including
cardiovascular disease and cancer, and the incidence of depression (Irwin, 2015).
A bad sleep routine can also bring about stress, which in turn affects the physical
and mental health (Benham, 2009). Considering the psychological and scientific
evidence of sleep and its effects on mental health, it is therefore most convenient
to discuss the 24/7 capitalism as a danger towards our generation. However, as
Crary advert sleep has become somewhat of a status case, and within the globalist
neoliberal paradigm, sleeping is for losers. Along with the evolution of technology
methods and motivations to accomplish the wrecking of sleep are fully in place
(Crary, 2013). Contrary to the studies and evidence of the major positives of sleep,
when the technologies and motivations of society come to a point where sleep is
useless, why should anyone object if, for instance, new drugs could allow employees
to work for 100 hours straight? A most fascinating thought one can argue.
Alongside with the end of sleep, productivity may flourish as employees around the
globe are able to work endless hours, but also sanction many hours of more leisure
time for us to recharge and spend time with loved ones.
Cederström (2018), in his article, “The Happy Fantasy”, discusses the technological
innovations of the last decades that have allowed people to always work, blurring
the line between work and personal life. Employees are now urged to think of work
as an opportunity for discovering their true spirit. But when work has evolved into
an abstract pursuit of happiness, employees may be left wondering where to draw
the line. Now happiness has almost become an expected part of work as the socalled “emotional capitalism” is flourishing. Further, Cederström (2018) discusses
the change in perception of work, from being an escape from boredom to an
obligatory path to happiness. Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, points out that his
perception of happiness has nothing to do with money nor success, but rather of
creating, spending time with loved ones and eating his favorite food (Cederström,
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2018). Which comes unsurprisingly. Asking people around you may certainly
respond to you quite similarly as Hsieh pondered to the question, what makes you
happy. Now the question becomes clear, whether happiness really makes you more
productive and effective in the perspective of Human Resource Management and
in the eyes of executives and the corporate board. Is it the healthy and fitnessfreak-employees that are always happy or is it the employees who work fewer
overtime hours and spending time with loved ones that are happier, or maybe even
more productive. It becomes almost a never-ending paradox, like the-chicken-andthe-egg dilemma.
Conclusion
The research shows that healthiness and happiness may not have a significant
impact on the corporate employee productivity. Wellness programs and other
corporate initiatives aimed at promoting health and well-being may not be a
solution to find a productive worker. Hence the relationship between happiness,
healthiness and productivity is not straightforward and other factors may have as
much impact on workplace performance. In some cases, where the strive for
healthiness and fitness may even evolve in negative thoughts and depression,
which would result in an even more unhappy employee, and would most certainly
result in a less productive worker. The obsession of the healthy and happy
workforce may be a way of increasing a company’s validity and reliability. “We, as
a company, care for our employees”. But the truth may be that the companies only
care for the perception of a healthy and a happy workplace. Maybe the solution in
the quest of productive workers and society lies in the belief of the 24/7 capitalism,
where no one needs sleep and manage to work 100 hours straight and then spend
100 hours of leisure time.
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References
Benham Grant. 2009. Sleep: An Important Factor in Stress-Health Models. Wiley
Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smi.1304
Retrieved 2023-04-23.
Cederström, Carl. (2018) Happiness Inc. in The Happiness Fantasy, Cambridge:
Polity.
Cederström, Carl. and Spicer, André. 2015. The Health Bazaar, chapter 2 in The
Wellness Syndrome.
Crary, Jonathan. 2013. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London:
Verso
Irwin
R.
Michael.
2015.
Why
Sleep
Is
Important
for
Health:
A
Psychoneuroimmunology Perspective. The Annual Review of Psychology.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115205
Retrieved 2023-04-23.
Jones, Damon. Molitor, David. Reif, Julian. 2019. What Do Workplace Wellness
Programs Do? Evidence from the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study. The Quarterly
of Economics, 134(4): 1747-1791.
Tam, Fiona. (2009) Foxconn factories are labor camps. South China Morning Post
Vohs, Kathleen. D. and Hafenbrack, Andrew. C. 2018. Hey Boss, You Don’t Want
Your Employees to Meditate. New York Times
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