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.