Happiness At Work:The Indonesian Generation Y Employees In IT Industry

Happiness at work has become important in recent years and it is proven as a fundamental aspect of well-being related to work.Happiness at work has shown positive associations with job satisfaction and performance,and negative associations with burnout and turnover intention.Due to the positive influence,recently many companies are focused on thinking about happiness at work in human resource development to increase the productivity.In addition,the previous study from Turkey mentions that generation X employees are happier than generation Y employees,besides that the data from Indonesian Job-street Survey also mentioned that the unhappiest employees were generally from the younger employees(21-25 years old)and they most represented in IT-hardware industries,general trading,and media industry.The current study aimed to know how happy the generation Y employees(18-35 years old)in IT industry are.The study used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate the prevalence of happiness among the Indonesian generation Y employees working in IT companies.It also geared to find the meaning of happiness,and the factors that affect these employees' happiness.This study used data from 304 Indonesian generation Y employees working in IT industry,special region of Yogyakarta.The study demonstrated that the participants of the generation Y employees working in IT companies are happy(87%),among them the male,the age group of 1981-1987(30-35 years old)and married employees were happier than their counterparts.Three most important aspects in perceiving the meaning of happiness at work are:1)Internalization of work into their identity,2)working in a worry-free environment,and 3)Togetherness.A positive relationship with co-workers is the key factor that influences happiness at work.The present study contributes significantly to the IT industries on how to manage these generation Y employees which has dominated the world of work.Managing such a generation has currently become a challenge to many organizations worldwide.The current study's contributions are in recruitment process,coaching activities and in-house training,workplace design,for example,providing a more happy-zone place and cafeteria-style workplace,and taking into consideration local wisdom in business practices in Indonesia such as Javanese culture values as a part of corporate culture and as corporate branding.