McCombs Launches Open Online Course on Happiness in the Workplace

If you want a better business, make sure your employees are happy. If you want to be a more successful employee, make sure not to neglect your own happiness.

That’s the advice of Raj Raghunathan, professor of marketing at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Raghunathan studies happiness and shares his insights in both his in-person classes at McCombs and in his award-winning online Coursera class that has been taken by more than 260,000 people in 196 countries since it launched in 2015.

Now, Raghunathan is offering a new online class aimed at making workplaces better for employers, employees, clients and customers. Happier Employees and Return on Investment, an open-access four-week course offered by McCombs through edX, is now open for enrollment.

The course explores five critical issues: why happiness at work matters; what the five most important determinants of happiness at work are; what holds people back from feeling happy and fulfilled at work; what people can do to enhance their own happiness levels at work; and what they can do to enhance the happiness of coworkers.

“When employees are happy on the job, they are more productive for their company and earn more for themselves, said Raghunathan. “They take fewer sick days, are more collegial, perform better in teams, are more creative and objective, and make better decisions.”

There are no prerequisites for the course. It is open to anyone who wishes to register. The online video lectures can be started and stopped on whatever timeline is convenient for each student. And the course is supported by an interactive website with resources, exercises and communication portals.

“We spend so much of our lives at work,” said Raghunathan. “It makes sense for us to do everything we can to maximize how happy we are in our jobs.”

This is the first online course that McCombs is offering in collaboration with edX, with a number of others soon to be launched.

Raghunathan is the Zale Centennial Professor of Business at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Inc., and Fast Company. He writes about happiness and leadership in a blog for Psychology Today called Sapient Nature. His book, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? was published in 2016 and has been translated into 13 languages. His TED Talk has been viewed by more than 17 million people worldwide.

For more information about Raghunathan’s work, read these McCombs Big Ideas feature stories or view the McCombs video Top Five Ways to Be Happier at Work.