The assumption “happy, productive worker”: what the federal civil servants think

Abstract

The assumption “happy, productive worker” claims that happy employees, whose needs are met at their workplaces, show a better performance than unhappy employees. This is a consolidated statement for the business society, but there are very few empirical references. Therefore, this study aims to examine workers’ perception in relation to the assumption “happy, productive worker”. A focus group was conducted, having an exploratory nature, in order to understand how participants see the variables under study. The focus group was conducted in an organization of the Judiciary that belongs to the federal government and it relied on a group made up of 7 people from various areas: 2 managers and 5 civil servants at lower levels. Summarizing findings, the evidence obtained here points out the development of studies that contribute to establish a theory that empirically supports the relation between job satisfaction, well-being at work, individual performance at work, and organizational structure that, thus, can provide some grounding to the widely spread assumption “happy, productive worker”. In the end, this study also allowed raising some hypotheses for further quantitative studies; for instance, the organizational climate can positively enhance the relation between well-being at work and individual performance at work and the physical structure will be positively associated with individual performance at work.