A new report found nearly half of Canadian workers feel satisfied in their current working life with happiness climbing in most demographics.

According to ADP Canada’s Happiness@Work Index for May, the National Work Happiness Score reached 6.7 out of 10, representing an increase 0.1 points from April.

ADP says the May Index means about 44 per cent of Canadian workers feel satiated with their role and responsibilities. Increases were also reported in the categories of compensation and benefits, recognition and support and career advancement options.

Haslam, ADP Canada’s vice-president of marketing, told BNNBloomberg.ca the latest trend is “very good news” for the workplace.

“It is really important that working Canadians have healthy relationships at work, and that Canadian employers are actually focused on the happiness of their team in order to get the best out of them,” she said.

Work happiness climbed or remained the same in every geographic location with the exception of Alberta, which fell 0.4 points to 6.5.

Haslam said that while the report doesn’t examine factors behind the happiness levels, she can speculate as to what might be behind the decline.

“My guess would be that things like fires in Alberta impact people's home lives and what we know about people is we're whole people, what it is that's impacting our personal life … certainly does bleed into the workplace,” she said.

When it comes to age demographics, work happiness among those aged 56 to 75 declined by 0.1 points, while the other demographics either climbed marginally or remained the same.

For the coming months, Haslam calls herself an “optimist” and hopes for the happiness trend to continue through the summer.

“I love patio season in Canada and so I'll admit to you that I believe that it will continue to go up,” she said. “I think one of the key elements that we need to be looking at is really what it is that's driving it, which is why I'm very interested in both the regional as well as the generational differences that we find on the Happiness@Work Index.”

Methodology

The Happiness@Work Index is measured monthly through a survey fielded by Maru Public Opinion on behalf of ADP Canada and is undertaken by the sample and data collection experts at Maru/Blue. The survey is run in the first week of each reported month for consistency purposes and asks over 1,200 randomly selected employed Canadian adults (including both employees and self-employed individuals) who are Maru Voice Canada online panelists to rate workplace factors on a scale from 1 to 10. Discrepancies in or between totals when compared to the data tables are due to rounding. 

The results are weighted by education, age, gender and region (and in Québec, language) to match the population, according to Census data. This is to ensure the sample is representative of the entire adult population of Canada. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size has an estimated margin of error (which measures sampling variability) of +/-2.8%, 19 times out of 20.