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ABSTRACT
Drawing from Positive psychology this research initially attempted to examine the relationship between Happiness, Resilience and Quality of Work Life amongst 81 employees of the service sector who were based in Pune, India. With the use of standardized psychometric tools data was collected. There was a significant positive correlation found between Happiness and Quality of Work Life, where R = .378, P < 0.01; and between Happiness and Resilience, where R = .265, P < 0.05. In the latter part of the research a pilot study was conducted to study the effectiveness of a web-based intervention on 9 BPO employees at their work-place. A Pre-test, Post-test control group quasi experimental design was used. The intervention was designed to induce positive emotions (thus enhancing happiness) while reducing negative emotion/ worry. The stimuli for web based intervention was designed on 4 positive emotions namely Interest, Joy, Serenity and Pride and included 5 themes, Colors, Humor, Expressions, Nature and India. As an effect of the intervention done for 10 days, the gain scores of the control group on affect balance were found to be significantly lower than the gain scores of the experimental group, where U = 14, P < 0.05. But, the gain scores of the control group on negative emotion/ worry were not found to be significantly lower than the gain scores of experimental group. The implications of this research have been further discussed.
Key Words: Happiness, Quality of Work Life, Resilience, Positive Emotions, Negative Emotion/ worry, Web-based intervention.
INTRODUCTION
"Right in this moment, I can't even remember what unhappy feels like."
- Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1).
We all aspire to experience such moments more often in our lives. The quest for being truly happy and contended has been one of the central goals of all human endeavors. Yet, today's workplaces are far from being joyous places due to presence of variety of stressors, cut throat competition, closed windows and formal communication patterns devoid of any humane connections. In such scenarios I/O psychologists have mostly focused on improving job satisfaction, work motivation, employee morale but somehow they looked at employees from the deficit perspective. Now with the advent of positive psychology and positive organization behavior, there has been...