Ethics and Happiness at Work in the Spanish Financial Sector

• Main Authors: Sonia Castellanos-Redondo, Domingo Nevado-Peña, Benito Yañez-Araque
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-11-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: happiness; ethics; productivity; business; financial
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9268

Happiness at work requires a good working environment, which undoubtedly improves productivity. In this sphere, the concept is closely related to job satisfaction, which is one of the main factors determining individual happiness, along with home ownership, security, and a healthy environment. Innovative policies to improve corporate well-being—organizational ethics—improve the image of the company, and help transfer the concept of ‘happy management’ to all stakeholders. In addition, remote working, which has become essential for many during the COVID-19 pandemic, poses a key issue in terms of human resource management that needs to be taken into account. Using a survey of working-age Spanish citizens, we established a measure of organizational ethics based on the possible discrepancy between citizens’ personal happiness and their happiness at work. The analysis focused on one of the essential economic sectors in the face of the pandemic, the financial sector. These workers demand organizational ethics with clear values in social responsibility and training, going beyond the achievement of a socially acceptable income. A comparative linear model is also used to test the relationships between a number of conditioning variables and organizational ethics. Citizens’/workers’ priorities are found to shift towards quality of life with a healthy environment, rather than sustainability.