Case Study 2: Happiness Coaches for Employees. Summary: Humans are basically one of the companies’ resources apart from capital and other assets and they are the hardest to manage since humans alive and they have feelings unlike the other resources. In this era of globalization, managers have started to realize that it is vital to ensure that their employees are in a good mood in order for them to be productive. Unproductivity means less profit, and less profit is not part of the companies’ goals. Humans have feelings and feelings can be either negative or positive or sometimes neutral. However, there is a considerable spillover from personal unhappiness to negative emotions at work and those who experience negative emotions in life and at work are most likely to engage in unproductive behaviors with customers, clients, or even fellow colleagues. Thus, the main issue right now is, whether is it appropriate for a company to hire happiness coach for their employees? Answers to the questions: 4-14 Do you think happiness coaches are effective? How might you assess their effectiveness? In our opinion, happiness coaches are effective in the sense that they are capable of alleviating the negative emotions experienced by the employees. They are able to raise the productivity of the employees and happy employees are better than those who struggle with bad emotions and are therefore not focusing on their job. The employees with bad emotions are thinking too much on the bad experience that they had experienced in the past whether from work or from their own personal life. A happy employee is able to give his/her full commitment to the jobs assigned to him/her and his productivity will give greater input to the jobs as well to the performance of the company. Happiness is very subjective and tangible thus it cannot be felt or seen but it can be measured through the final product or output. For instance, we can make a comparison between coached employees and non-coached employees and see if there is any difference between them. We can also assess the effectiveness of happiness coached by observing the behaviors of the coached employees such as the interaction with fellow colleagues or even the customers. 4-15 State the benefits and disadvantages of employing happiness coaches for employees. Some of the benefits of employing happiness coaches are the coached employees will get their energy increased and motivated to get the job done. Next, the coached employees will have a higher resilience and consistency towards any internal or external issues that might lead to poor performances. On the other hand, the drawbacks of employing happiness coaches are of course the company will need to incur additional costs to employ the happiness coaches. And also, employing happiness coaches are the other means of getting the employees to work harder and burdening them with more workloads.
4-16. Under what circumstances-if any- is it ethically appropriate for a supervisor to suggest a happiness coach for a subordinate? We think it is ethically appropriate for a supervisor to suggest a happiness coach for a subordinate when he spotted an issue and the company provide such support for the employees. It is the obligation of the supervisor to inform the employees that the company provided such support for the employees and that it shows that the company is concerned about employees’ happiness. Lessons Learned and Islamic Perspective: After careful analysis of this case, we have learned several lessons that we feel are important to be highlighted. The first lesson is that, having problem is normal and inevitable because we are human beings thus we cannot run from having problem. But, the important thing is how we manage those problems. There are things that require us to think rationally and try to avoid from overthinking and eventually leads to “work blues” at work place. Next, we should learn to remain positive and be more optimistic. Every problem has its solutions. We should trust that there our problems can be solved and what can be done by us is we need to shift few simple things in our life and then practicing them until they become habits. In the holy Quran, it is stated Whoever does right, whether male or female, and is a believer, We will make him live a good life, and We will award them their reward for the best of what they used to do. (Quran, 16:97). Based on this verse, the true way to achieve happiness is to obey God and follow His religion. When this happiness penetrates and fills the heart of the believer, he does in fact live in this world as if he were in the paradise. Those are the people who find true happiness in this world. In the verse, happiness is in the good life as mentioned, and that even the rich disbelievers cannot find despite the money they possess. In order to find the true happiness, we need to know what is the purpose of our life and how to reach the success in the hereafter and to fulfill the requirements of reaching the success is by following the commands of God and His true religion.
