Happy workplace: A study of a selected company in Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate, Thailand

Abstract

          The purpose of this study was to apply routine to research or R2R to create happiness in the workplace of an automotive parts company at Amata Nakorn Industrial Estate Chonburi, Thailand. R2R refers to making a routine jobs to a research, using a systematic process to gain knowledge and to change problems to be a research result for development This study was done in a selected organization with 254 employees at every level of employment in the organization. The researcher used multiple methods for data collection. For quantitative data collection questionnaire was used before and after setting up the activities. For qualitative data collection, three qualitative data collection strategies were used, document reviews on policy documents, human resource documents and activity programs. Secondly, the semi-structured interview with the participants at the operator level, lastly, observation using photos and videos was used. The findings of this study explained the planning, processing, and implementation of each activity during the Happy workplace project from January to December2013 and also presented the results of low satisfaction responses to improve each activity. The main findings that emerged from interviews by using manual coding were: 1) Welfare and Friendliness: the main keys of a happy workplace; 2) Comments and Suggestions for Happy Activity Programs; and 3) Employee perspectives for the organization in the future. There were two implications from this study: (1) Implications for the organization level and (2) Implications for individual’s level.