Including lunch, I spend about 45 hours at work each week. If you also factor in commuting to and from work, that's about 50 hours of my week that are solely dedicated to work-related activities, equaling 41.6% of my time during a five-day workweek.

So if I were unhappy at my job, that would mean I would spend nearly half of my workweek feeling miserable. Life is too short to waste time being miserable. Who has time for that? I certainly don't.

Not only should you care about your happiness and connection to your job, but a 2015 survey done by the Global Challenge (now known as Virgin Pulse Global Challenge), in conjunction with Stanford University, indicates companies should care about your engagement and satisfaction too.

In the survey, 11,051 employees from 25 organizations and 63 countries were surveyed about employee engagement and the connection between their productivity and engagement levels.

“The data shows that employees with the highest engagement levels also reported feeling more productive,” Virgin Pulse Data Scientist Dr. Olivia Sackett said. “In other words, those who were connected with their workplaces reported better outputs.”

Dr. David Batman, member of the Science Advisory Board, Virgin Pulse Institute, added, “If businesses put too much of a priority on their bottom lines rather than their people, they may end up with a stressed workforce – not an engaged one – which may negatively impact their bottom line.”

Engagement is extremely important to productivity, but so is an employee's happiness, according to a report by IZA World of Labor. Dr Eugenio Proto, of the University of Warwick's Department of Economics, shows a positive correlation between a rise in happiness and an increase in productivity.

Proto said, “Happiness seems to motivate greater effort, increasing output without affecting its quality and thus boosting productivity. Both a temporary increase in happiness and long-term changes in baseline happiness are associated with greater productivity.”

Proto also emphasized that the effect happiness has on productivity raises the possibility of self-reinforcing spirals – ones that might even operate at a macroeconomic level.

Happiness might lead to greater productivity in an economy, and that might in turn result in greater well-being across its population. So in essence, happiness has a ripple effect and the potential to positively impact employees across an organization.

The credit union industry at its core is a customer service-based industry. Happy, engaged employees who are operating at full capacity are more likely to translate to happy, satisfied members.

Conversely, unhappy, stressed employees can have a negative impact. If you're stressed at work, it's easier to make mistakes as well.

“When employees are stressed, they don't have access to their full brainpower,” said Dr. Cynthia Ackrill, a physician trained in neuroscience, wellbeing and leadership coaching, as well as an expert consultant for the Global Challenge's psychological wellbeing module.

Working longer than eight hours doesn't increase my productivity – it has the reverse effect. My productivity, energy and creativity take a nose dive right around the eight-hour mark and I find myself making more mistakes. As the saying goes, “Work smarter, not harder” (or longer, for that matter).

Ultimately, we all have a stake in this – employees and organizations. Happiness, productivity and engagement are all important factors for you and your credit union's bottom line.

A balanced life outside of work can also be huge contributing factor to happiness at work. Most people don't regret engaging in fun activities with family or friends, but they do regret the experiences they miss.

Take it from Bronnie Ware, who wrote a book about her experience caring for the dying. Ware said there were common themes that surfaced again and again when she questioned people about their life's regrets, including:

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn't work so hard.
I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish I had let myself be happier.

This is just a small reminder of the importance of balance and the things that bring us happiness. In the ecosystem of life, everything is connected. A happy personal life can translate to greater happiness at work.

Of course, happiness operates on a spectrum. For one person it may mean spending time with family, doing yoga or hiking to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and for others it may mean binging on an entire season of “House of Cards” while sipping on some pinot and grubbing on cheddar popcorn. So determine what brings you happiness and makes you calm, and do more of it.

Life is a constant juggling act. The challenge is determining which items are glass balls and which are rubber. While juggling, if you were to drop one, would it bounce back or break? After all, working late means missing life's milestones, and babies don't take their first steps twice.

So, perhaps now is a good time to re-write that New Year's resolution that you've probably already stopped following. Cross out the line that says “lose 20 pounds” and write in “achieve balance.” I bet if you achieve the latter, the former will happen too.

Let 2017 be your year of balance!

Tahira Hayes is a Correspondent-at-Large for CU Times. She can be reached at thayes@cutimes.com.

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Show Work-Related Stress, Unhappiness the Door in 2017

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