There are several drivers underpinning how good work feels, and how much each one matters is personal: shaped by your own needs, desires and character.
Back in 2020, the Indeed Work Happiness Score (US research, over 5,000 responses) identified twelve key drivers of happiness at work:
- Belonging
- Energy
- Appreciation
- Purpose
- Achievement
- Compensation
- Support
- Learning
- Inclusion
- Flexibility
- Trust
- Management
The research is a few years old now, but I keep returning to the list, because it does something useful: it breaks the vague cloud of “how work feels” into twelve tangible elements you can actually look at, and act on, one at a time.
One finding worth keeping from the original research: there was a gap between what people said drove their happiness at work and what the data showed actually did. We are not always right about what we’re missing. Which is exactly why a structured look helps. You may be well paid and well appreciated, and there are still ten other doors where dissatisfaction can walk in.
The check: three scores, not one
Work through the twelve drivers and give each one three scores out of five:
- How much did this matter to me five years ago?
- How much does this matter to me now?
- How satisfied am I with this, in my current work, right now?
The last two scores find the classic gap: anything that matters a lot and scores low is a priority worth attention. That alone is useful.
But the first score is where transitions show themselves. Look at the drivers where scores one and two are far apart. Maybe achievement ran your twenties and now sits quietly behind flexibility and purpose. Maybe belonging barely registered while you were building, and now its absence is the loudest thing in your week. Nothing at work needs to have changed at all for work to stop fitting: you changed, and the job kept serving the person you were five years ago.
That’s the glitch, and it’s why work can be objectively fine and still feel wrong. The drivers give it a name and an address, which turns “I’m just not happy any more” into “flexibility and purpose now matter more to me than achievement, and this role was built for achievement”. One of those you can work with.
Then take one small action
Once a driver stands out, think small. If inclusion is the gap: could you join an internal committee, share your skills with another team, mentor someone junior? If learning is the gap: what’s the smallest course, project or conversation that would feed it? Whether you’re looking to feel better in your current role, choosing what to look for in a new one, or working out where to start on something bigger, the drivers turn a vague unhappiness into a short list of positive priorities.
A client story
One client had been with the same company for years and loved it, but was starting to feel real panic and frustration about her career. A difficult relationship with her boss, and a role she was becoming less effective in: not through ability, but through motivation that had been draining for a long time. Working through what mattered to her now (not what had mattered when she joined), she became clear and confident about what needed to change, and made an internal move to a department where she could thrive: same company she loved, free of the difficult relationship, and clear about the direction it could take her.
The point of the story isn’t the happy ending. It’s that the answer wasn’t “leave” or “put up with it”. It was a precise understanding of which drivers had shifted, which opened a third option neither panic nor patience could see.
If your own scores throw up a gap you can’t read (it does that: the exercise finds things), a Clarity Creator session is a good place to work out what the gap is telling you: 90 minutes, your twelve scores, and what they mean for the decision in front of you.
