What Makes Millennials Happy in their Workplace?

Abstract

Happiness in the workplace remains to be an under-researched field which is unfortunate considering that the happiness-productive worker link has been strongly established. More essentially, there has been a lack of research on happiness in the workplace which considers a specific sample of millennials. In preparation for a workforce dominated with millennials, this research will help address the gap with regards to the lack of research on Malaysian millennials’ happiness in the workplace. Through a thorough literature review, six predictors or antecedents of happiness in the workplace among millennials which are meaningful work, work autonomy, transformational leadership, workplace friendship, work life balance, and gratitude have been chosen in this research. This study consists of millennials (“millennials” or Generation Y is defined in the selected literature as individuals born between years 1982 and 2004) who have undergone full time employment of at least one year or more. The results indicated that all the six predictors showed significant moderate to high positive relationships with happiness in the workplace. Multiple regression analysis showed that all six predictors significantly predicts millennials’ happiness in the workplace, besides gratitude. Implications of this study with regards to managing millennial talent in organisations are then discussed.