Certainly, living a virtuous life is a daunting task, but imagine the positive social consequences if the majority of companies would challenge employees to live such a life. Moreover, doing good is clearly in alignment with the culture one would hope for in a Catholic health care organization. Though Elliott did not consciously integrate mission into the workshop, for he was focused on creating an environment to reduce turnover, as time passed the fit between virtue and Saint Frances Medical Center’s mission became apparent.
Elliott’s “In Search of Joy” workshop embeds some primary assumptions from the psychology of happiness research that should be made explicit. First, personal well-being at work clearly is connected to one’s life away from work.
In the past, the adage was “when you come to work, you should leave your troubles at the door.” We may hide or even repress our negative emotions, but negativity remains and is a potential threat to productivity. As indicated in the workshop, our thinking leads to emotions, which in turn,shape our actions.
Employers and employees may have
long held the belief that external matters
are private and not the concern of
the workplace, but happy workers are
the ones most likely to create a strong,
healthy organization, thus we cannot
pretend to ignore what happens
elsewhere.