1. Introduction
After decades of development, the number of small and micro enterprises in China has expanded rapidly, laying a certain foundation for the sustained and steady growth of the national economy. When Chinese society enters a new normal of development, small and micro enterprises are facing dual pressures of transformation, upgrading, and market competition, and the psychological and work conditions of their employees will also be affected. Compared with large and medium-sized enterprises, small and micro enterprises have incomplete management systems, poorer working environment, lower salary and welfare levels, longer working hours, lower social status, and great differences among employees. These factors make it more difficult for small and micro enterprises to manage their employees. Most scholars study small and micro enterprises from the aspects of management methods and processes, focusing on improving management efficiency. However, this traditional research is difficult to fundamentally solve problems such as employee psychological pressure and occupational burnout. The "happiness management" model is mainly focused on improving employee happiness. It incorporates employee happiness into the company's core competitiveness and human resource development direction, and better compensates for the lack of traditional management methods. This study will focus on employee happiness as the starting point, summarize the influencing factors of previous studies on employee happiness, and construct a measurement model for employee happiness. This study conducted an effective survey of 1108 employees from 30 small and micro enterprises in China, measuring and analyzing their happiness levels to discover the characteristics of employee happiness in these enterprises. Based on the survey results, targeted measures are proposed to improve employee happiness, providing data reference and theoretical suggestions for small and micro enterprises to continuously improve human resource management and sustainable development.
2. Literature Review
Employees happiness degree is a kind of quantification of employee happiness. The academic community has different interpretations of this term. It is generally believed that employees happiness is the mental health status of employees in the work environment, reflecting the physiological satisfaction and psychological satisfaction level of employees at work (Page & Vella-Brodrick, 2009). Employee happiness includes not only various material factors, but also individual psychological factors. Subjectively, different employees have different aspects such as age, gender, interpersonal relationship, personality traits, self-efficacy and source of psychological control. These will make employees have various characteristics of the happiness for the same kind of things and events. Objectively speaking, the workload, work environment, salary and welfare, corporate culture and promotion opportunities faced by different employees are all work-related factors that may be the objective source of employee happiness experience. Therefore, employee happiness is actually a psychological reaction for an employee to subjective conditions.
On the subjective side, first of all, individuals in different ages have different feelings about the happiness in terms of the same thing and event. Followed by gender, most studies found that women's positive emotional level is slightly higher than men's, and the happiness degree is also higher. The third is interpersonal relationship. Everyone will contact and communicate with others at work. This kind of interpersonal communication can greatly affect employee happiness. The fourth is personality traits. The internal psychological mechanism determines how events are perceived and affects the happiness experience. Kuhl and Bechmann (1985) pointed out that optimists expect a favorable outcome in life and work towards their own goals, so optimists are better able to achieve goals and experience more happiness than pessimists. Diener and Diener (1995) also found that the self-esteem is closely related to his happiness. The fifth is self-efficacy, which is a self-assessment of an individual's ability to work. Yu et al (2005) and other studies found that there is a significant positive correlation between self-efficacy, positive coping and subjective well-being. The higher the self-efficacy, the more optimistic and positive attitude to cope with life events, so people can experience more the sense of well-being. The sixth is the source of psychological control. Diener (1984) pointed out that external controllers believe that adverse life events are uncontrollable, which will result in depression and lower self-happiness; while internal controllers will not choose to escape from reality, they will try to change the situation, so their happiness degrees are higher.
In terms of objective aspects, work factors, such as workload, work environment, corporate culture, promotion opportunities, etc., may have a strong correlation with an employee’s perception and happiness considering all aspects of the enterprise. A human resources psychology research institution observed nearly 100 companies in different natures. The results showed that employees in different types of enterprises have great differences in happiness feelings in job satisfaction and recognition factors (Jing & Chen, 2010). Followed by economic factors, most studies found that employee happiness is positively correlated with income. The higher the wage level and the smaller the wage difference, the higher the happiness. The third is the cultural factor. People in different social environments will have their own ideas. Influenced by social culture, the individual may have divers feelings in life satisfaction, emotional experience and value judgment (Qing-xiong & Yin-Ling, 2014). Moreover, social support factors, family, neighborhood, friend relationship, etc., will affect employee happiness. The disharmony in any relationship may cause the employee's happiness to decrease.
Employee happiness is a comprehensive psychological experience in terms of work and life. Pengfei et al. (2012) started from three levels of individual, enterprise and society, and analyzed and summarized the factors affecting employee happiness degree. Their research provided a good idea for studying the happiness of small and micro enterprises.
3. Employee Happiness Measurement Model
3.1 Happiness Scale
The measurement of employee happiness should be based on the investigation. The design of the survey scale should follow the principle of level analysis method. Firstly, it is necessary to comprehensively analyze the factors that may affect the happiness of employees, and the important influencing factors are indispensable. Secondly, each influencing factor should be independent of each other and try not to cover each other. Third, the factors of choice should be easy to investigate, or easy to be converted into question forms or other factors that could be included (Yunxia & Lijuan, 2012). Fourth, happiness should have overall representativeness and applicability, so the factors should be greatly influenced. Fifth, with the change of region and time, the structure of the survey scale should be adjusted accordingly (Chengyong et al., 2007). After the scale structure, this can be used to design a questionnaire to measure employee happiness. Generally, the Likert five-point scale is used. The influencing factors of employee happiness are determined at first. Each influencing factor is designed with a series of objective questions. Then, each question is evaluated and selected by the respondents according to the actual situation.
3.2 Happiness Measurement Model
After determining the various influencing factors and problems of happiness, we can establish a happiness measurement model, generally using a linear mathematical model, as follows:
H= ∑UiPi/∑Pi, •••••• ①
Among them: (1) H is happiness,
(2) Ui is the average value of the ith factor of happiness, which is obtained by the weighted average method.
Ui= ∑UijPij/∑Pij , •••••• ②
(3) Pi is the ith factor weight,
(4) Uij is the mean value of employee happiness for the jth problem of the ith factor,
Uij=∑Nijfij/∑fij, •••••• ③
Nij is the happiness score of the ith factor j question given by the respondents in each questionnaire. According to the size of the happiness, the respondents should choose the value of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 by themselves. fij is the weight of the ith factor j question for the respondents in each questionnaire.
(5) Pij is the weighted mean of the jth problem of the ith factor, and n is the number of valid questionnaires.
Pij=∑fij/n, •••••• ④
The influencing factor of employee happiness can be set as one factor which can be measured in one aspect. It can also be set as multiple items which can make comprehensive measurement on the happiness of multiple aspects of employees or construct a more complex nonlinear model or the structural equation model is used for measurements.
3.3. Sample Collection and Analysis Methods
This study conducted reliability and validity tests on the data collected from the questionnaire through SPSS 26.0, and based on the questionnaire data and feedback from the respondents. The main analysis methods include:
(1)Descriptive statistical analysis: Descriptive statistical analysis is conducted on the data collected after distributing the questionnaire. This article reflects the sample characteristics and data distribution by analyzing the age, gender, income, education, and other data of the respondents.
(2) Reliability and validity analysis: Reliability mainly refers to whether the data obtained after several tests have consistency and reliability; Validity mainly refers to whether the survey questionnaire distributed in this article can accurately and accurately measure the expression level of the characteristics of the test question.
4. Small and Micro Enterprise Employee Happiness Survey
4.1. Survey Object
This paper chose small and micro enterprises in Shandong Province as research resources. Shandong Province has a number of resource-based cities and coastal cities. Zaozhuang City, a resource-based city in transition, and Rizhao City, a fast-growing coastal city, are the main research areas. According to the nature and scale of the company, stratified sampling was conducted. A total of 30 small and micro enterprises were selected. The total number of employees was 1,426, which were excluded the off-duty 156 employees. The number of participants was 1,272, and the participation rate was 89.2%. 1272 questionnaires were distributed, 1232 questionnaires were returned, and the questionnaire recovery rate was 96.8%. Among the 1232 questionnaires returned, the effective questionnaires were 1108, and the questionnaires were effective rate is 89.9%. The personnel structure of the valid questionnaire is shown in Table1:
Table 1: Effective questionnaire personnel structure type
4.2. Questionnaire
4.2.1. Questionnaire Structure
Firstly, determining the factors that affect the employee's happiness is necessary. Six work factors, such as work environment, salary and welfare, physical and mental health, career development, interpersonal relationship, and democratic management, which have a greater impact on employee happiness, are selected as statistical elements (Junlin, 2018). Secondly, each factor is subdivided into a number of specific questions (currently selected 8), and the respondents score the happiness level of each question (take a 5-point system, very happy is 5, happy is 4, general happy is 3, unhappy is 2, very unhappy is 1).
4.2.2. Determination of Weights
The weight of each influencing factor is determined by the expert scoring method based on the survey. First of all, according to the principle of stratified sampling, 50 enterprise managers and 200 employees were selected to do the investigation and got their average scores. The results were then submitted to 5 human resources management experts for reference. Experts will give their weight coefficients. Finally, the average of the five experts is the weight of each factor, namely the Pi value. According to statistics, the calculation results of the weights of various factors are shown in Table 2. Furthermore, each factor is subdivided into 8 specific problems. The weight of each problem in each factor is judged by the respondent in the questionnaire, which is showed as fij value, and then the average value of all the questionnaires is used as the weight of the problem, which is the Pij value.
Table 2: Employee happiness factors Influencing factors Weight
4.2.3. Reliability and Validity Analysis
The test-retest reliability of the questionnaire was analyzed. According to the type of personnel structure listed in Table 4-1, according to the principle of stratified sampling, before the formal investigation, 100 employees were selected as the preliminary investigation objects. The same questionnaire was used to conduct two investigations. The interval between the two investigations was 4 weeks. The data of the two surveys were determined by SPSS software for retesting credibility. The Kappa coefficients of various factors of happiness are shown in Table 4-3. In general, for the questionnaire, the Kappa coefficient indicates that the retesting reliability is good when it is greater than 0.75, relatively good at 0.4~0.75, and worse when it is lower than 0.4 (Wuyi & Bingyi, 2005). From the reliability test of the factors affecting happiness in Table 3, it can be seen that five of the six subscales have a reliability of more than 0.75, and one is between 0.4 and 0.75, which fully explains the subscales and total amount. The table has a high degree of credibility.
Table 3: Reliability test of factors affecting happiness
Since the validity content includes a wide range of categories, it generally involves content validity. The content validity of the questionnaire is a subjectively strong indicator. The analysis and evaluation generally adopt the expert judgment method, which is determined by the experts’ review (Diener & Diener, 1995). There are few research literatures on the happiness questionnaire. The results of this study are not tested by mature standards. Therefore, based on a large number of surveys and interviews conducted to business managers and employees, considering relevant literature and discussing with human resource management expert, we got 6 factors (48 questions in total) which may have relatively large effect on happiness degree, in order to improve the effectiveness of the questionnaire.
5. Overall Analysis of Employee Happiness in Small and Micro Enterprises
5.1. Employee Happiness Statistics
In the 1108 valid questionnaires recovered, the data of the 6 survey factors and the 48 questions of the employee's happiness were collected and summarized separately according to the format in Table 4 (the specific problems of each factor and detailed data).
Table 4: Statistical Chart of Employee Happiness Factors Survey
Calculate the weighted mean of each problem for each influencing factor by the formula ④Pij=∑fij/n (calculation omitted);
Calculate the mean value of happiness for each problem of each influencing factor by the formula ③Uij=∑Nijfij/∑fij (calculation omitted);
The mean value of happiness for each factor is calculated by the formula ②Ui= ∑UijPij/∑Pij, as shown in Table 5-2;
Table 5: Happiness factors and Weight of Each Evaluation Factor
The overall happiness value of the employee is calculated by the formula ①H= ∑UiPi /∑Pi ;
The average employee happiness is:
H = ∑UiPi/∑Pi = (3.49×13+2.77×19+3.15×17+2.60×19+3.51×17+2.89 ×16)/100=3.07 ;
Converted to a percentage system is: 3.07 ÷ 5 × 100% = 61.40%;
It can be seen that the overall level of happiness of small and micro enterprises is relatively low, and there is a certain distance from the upper middle level of the normal 75%.
5.2. Analysis of Differences in Happiness of Various Factors
The happiness of employees in small and micro enterprises varies in different factors, and the degree of difference can be explained by the chi-square test:
H0: There is no significant difference in happiness between the six factors; H1: There are significant differences in the happiness of the six factors.
Under H0:Ei=(3.49+2.77+3.15+2.60+3.51+2.89)/6=3.07; chi-square: X2=∑(Oi-Ei)2 / Ei = (3.49-3.07)2/ 3.07 +(2.77-3.07)2/ 3.07+(3.15-3.07)2/ 3.07+(2.60-3.07)2 / 3.07+(3.51-3.07)2/ 3.07+(2.89-3.07)2/ 3.07=0.24
It obeys the chi-square distribution with a degree of freedom of 6-1=5. At a significance level of 0.05, the Chaka distribution probability table gives a critical value of X2a(n-1) =11.07 because X2 < X2a (n-1), so accept H0. thus, there is no significant difference in happiness between the six factors. The comparison of employee happiness values of different influencing factors is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Comparison of Employee Happiness Values of Different Influencing Factors
It can be seen that the difference in happiness perception among employees in the six factors of salary and welfare, work environment, physical and mental health, career development, interpersonal relationship and democratic management is not obvious. The factors that make the employee happiness higher are interpersonal relationships and work environment, while salary and welfare and career development make the employee happiness lower.
5.3. Analysis of Employee Happiness
From the evaluation indicators of 48 specific questions on the questionnaire, three questions that list the highest and lowest employee happiness are shown in Tables 6 and 7:
Table 6: Three Questions With The Highest Employee Happiness
Table 7: Three Questions with The Lowest Employee Happiness
It can be seen that the employees of small and micro enterprises have the highest happiness in the three issues of work distribution, internal interpersonal relationship and less institutional constraints. The happiness on the two compensation benefits and a democratic management issue is the lowest.
6. Analysis of Employee Happiness in Different Demographic Characteristics
6.1. Statistical Results of Employee Happiness in Different Demographic Characteristics
Different employees have different feelings about the happiness of the same problem, so pay attention to the differences between individual employees in the survey. The valid questionnaires are classified according to the types of personnel of the surveyed subjects, and statistics are made separately. The statistical results are shown in Table 8.
Table 8: Statistics on Employee Happiness of Different Demographic Characteristics
6.2. Differences in Employee Happiness Between Different Demographic Characteristics
For the happiness values of gender, age, age, education, position and employment characteristics in Table 8, the Bartlett. Test() function is analyzed by the homogeneity test of variance in R software. The P values are 0.1531, 0.9294, 0.9594, 0.9002, 0.8817 and 0.9233 respectively, which are all far greater than 0.05, indicating that each factor is equal variance at each level. Using the variance analysis aov() function in R software, the P values are 0.925, 4.57e-05, 0.00132, 0.00475, 0.00341, and 0.00114 at the significance level of 0.01, indicating that gender factors have no significant effect on employee happiness, while age, working years, education, position, and employment have a significant impact on employment happiness.
6.3. Analysis of Employee Happiness in Different Demographic Characteristics
The data in Table 8 can be seen that the happiness of employees with different demographic characteristics is different in terms of each factor. For this reason, the comparison of happiness values of various factors is made for gender, age, working years, education, position and employment characteristics. As showed in Figure2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7:
Figure 2: Comparison of Happiness Values of Different Gender
Figure 3: Comparison of Happiness Values of Different Ages
Figure 4: Comparison of Happiness Values of Different Working Years
Figure 5: Comparison of Happiness Values of Different education levels
Figure 6: Comparison of Happiness Values in Different Job Position
Figure 7: Comparison of Happiness Values of Different Employment Properties
First, the gender factor: the overall difference in different genders employee’s happiness is very small, but the happiness performance of each factor is not the same. Male employees have higher happiness in working environment, physical and mental health and interpersonal relationship, and female employees have higher happiness in compensation and benefits, career development and democratic management. The results above mean that the psychological needs of employees in different genders and the criteria for judging the factors of happiness are different.
Second, the age factor: in the classification of different ages, the highest happiness degree was showed in employees aged 51-60, which is 3.20, and the happiness degree of employees aged 20-30 is 3.13. As for the happiness of employees aged 31-40 and 41-50. The degrees are not much different, they are 2.75 and 2.89 respectively, which shows that the middle-aged employees of small and micro enterprises have higher requirements for enterprises, and the pressure on work and life is greater.
Third, the working years factor: in different company’s ages classifications, the employee happiness is 3.18 when the working years is within 5 years. The employee happiness for a 6-10 working years employee is 2.96, and the employee happiness for a 11-20 working years employee is 2.89. The employees who participated in the short working years were slightly happier, while the long working years means slightly lower happiness degree. Thus, small and micro enterprises have less consideration of the factors of employee working years when formulating policies.
Fourth, the educational factor: in the classification of education level, employees of different educational levels have almost no difference in happiness in terms of salary, welfare and physical and mental health, and other factors are quite different. In general, the less educated employees, the higher the happiness, while the more educated employees, the lower the happiness.
Fifth, the position factor: In the classification of the nature of the position, the financial staff has the highest happiness, the sales staff and the production staff have lower happiness, and the management staff has the lowest happiness. Therefore, the pressures and tasks faced by employees in different positions are different.
Sixth, employment factors: In the classification of employment nature, employees with company shares have higher happiness, employees with formal labor contracts have lower happiness, and employees without formal labor contracts have the lowest happiness. Thus, employees of different natures have different rewards and social security, and their happiness is different.
7. Discussion and Conclusion
7.1. Discussion
First, among the many factors, the lowest happiness of employees is salary and welfare and career development. The happiness degrees are 55.40% and 52.00% respectively, but the employees pay close attention to these two items, since the weights are 19% and 19% respectively. Due to various reasons, small and micro enterprises have many gaps in salary and treatment compared with large and medium-sized enterprises. This requires continuous improvement and development of enterprises to improve the salary level of employees and provide better career development opportunities.
Second, among the many factors, the highest employee happiness is interpersonal relationship, the happiness is 70.20%. Employees pay more attention to interpersonal relationships, since the weight is 17%. Therefore, small and micro enterprises should continue to give full play to their own characteristics and strengthen the construction of interpersonal relationships so that employees can work in pleasant interpersonal relationships, thereby increasing employees' sense of identity and personal well-being.
Third, due to various conditions, small and micro enterprises cannot improve their own conditions in order to improve employee happiness, especially for employees to improve competitive salaries. However, companies can improve the overall happiness of employees by improving interpersonal relationships, improving democratic management, doing vocational training, providing development planning, and relieving psychological stress to compensate for the shortcomings of lower pay levels and poorer labor conditions.
Fourth, Due to the choice of the number, type of the enterprise and time limitations, the respondents have a certain geographical type. By only investigating the six main factors in the work factors and ignoring the influence of other secondary factors, the results obtained may have some deviation from the actual situation inevitably. Therefore, in future research, it is necessary to select a wider range of enterprises and more factors for detail investigation and analysis to obtain more general data. Researchers also could select a single type of enterprise according to the nature, scale, and geographical type of the enterprise and get data for specific companies, which may be better for small micro enterprise management.
7.2. Conclusion
The article provides a theoretical summary of the factors influencing employee happiness and constructs a testing theoretical model for employee happiness, providing a theoretical method for testing the happiness of small and micro enterprises. This study is of great significance to the field of human resources and also contributes to the future theory of organizational behavior. The article conducted a detailed survey on the happiness of employees in small and micro enterprises, and conducted empirical analysis from the aspects of overall employee happiness, extreme employee happiness, differences in happiness among various factors, and differences in happiness among employees with different demographic characteristics. This study has certain guiding significance for the human resource management practices of related enterprises. According to research, different employees have different needs. Employees will judge their own happiness according to the factors provided by the company. Different employees will have different feelings when the same factors are provided by the company. In terms of measures to improve employee happiness, small and micro enterprises should distinguish between employee characteristics and adopt different promotion methods for different employees.
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