Could you be happier at work?
In his 2013 study, Daniel Fujiwara of the London School of Economics concluded that:
“Visiting museums has a positive impact on happiness and self-reported health after controlling for a large range of other determinants.”
His is just one of many studies demonstrating how museums directly contribute to the well-being of a community.
Still, each year, museums across the globe experience funding cuts. We talk about how this is an issue, but we don’t talk about what it means to be a worker in museums under these circumstances.
What about them? How are we ensuring our museum employees come to work each morning energized, engaged, and ready to take on their ever-growing list of tasks with shrinking funds?
I believe that keeping its workers happy should be the top priority of every museum.
Engaged museum workers will have a deeper commitment to the mission of a museum than a disengaged one, and they will strive for a higher quality product (exhibition, program, publication, etc.) for the public. Building off of the growing academic field of positive psychology, I intend to explore what being happy at work means, why it is important for the museum community, and how it can be accomplished.
Will you help? Take the survey, send me a story or two, and offer some feedback on the resource lists for leaders and for individuals.
Let’s all be happy at work!
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Here’s the link to my Joyful Museums article that appeared in the Fall 2015 edition of New England Museums Now