**Abstract**

This chapter proposes four distinct techniques to boost subjective well-being, also called happiness, tailored for hybrid-working employees. These techniques suggested here are as follows: 1) selected goal-setting techniques around the 'why of goal pursuit' with a particular focus on self-concordance and approaching/avoidance driven goal strivings, 2) job crafting/leisure crafting, 3) acts of kindness and 4) gratitude exercises. The chapter discusses each technique on its merits by reviewing the related literature, and how they can be useful in boosting people's subjective well-being for employees who are predominantly working in a hybrid format, and therefore, their experiences at work as well as at home impact strongly on their subjective well-being.

**Keywords:** goal setting, job crafting, acts of kindness, intervention techniques, subjective well-being, happiness

## **1. Introduction**

The COVID-19 pandemic has made a lasting impact on the way we work. A recent survey by the Office for National Statistics [1] revealed that most employees (84%) in Great Britain, who worked from home because of the pandemic, plan to work from home and in the workplace ('hybrid work') in the future. Similarly, recent survey data from Ireland indicates that 88% of employees who can work remotely would like to keep doing so [2], and over 80% of respondents in an international survey report that the hybrid working format is an important aspect of future employment decisions [3]. Organisations need to respond to these future remote work intentions, and at the same time address how they can best balance their needs and those of their staff. The pandemic has accelerated this process and has sparked a lively debate on the issues of remote working and the organisations' ability to develop effective hybrid workplace policies [4]. While there are good reasons for employees to come back to their formal workplace, the pandemic has demonstrated that employees can get their work done from home and that hybrid working is likely to stay. However, in the long term, hybrid working is expected to contribute to the blurring of boundaries between work and personal life [5, 6]. The blurring of these boundaries poses a threat to a healthy work-life balance as employees find it increasingly difficult to rest from work, either physically or mentally [4, 7, 8]. To address and mitigate these issues, we propose effective techniques to boost the subjective well-being of hybrid-working employees to support and maintain a healthy work-life balance. In doing so, this chapter contributes to the positive psychology literature by identifying techniques that are equally effective in the workplace and in the personal life domains, and therefore, addressing employees as human beings as a whole for example done by Foucault and Hadot and their spiritual exercises [9]. Although Hadot and Foucault conceptualise and interpret spiritual exercises differently, their account of spiritual exercises is useful as it allows modern-day hybrid-working employees to transform and take care of the self [10]. For example, spiritual exercises can help hybrid-working employees reflect upon the practical or existential issues in life in a philosophical way, and this will help them better understand themselves, identify opportunities for improvement, and gain inner peace and tranquillity [11]—which undoubtedly will boost their well-being. While spiritual exercises are meaningful, they tend to be practised individually and the remainder of this chapter will consider exercises that promote engagement with colleagues and others.

Focusing on techniques that are effective in both work and personal life domains is crucial because they are likely to be the most effective since the working and private spaces are intertwined for employees who work in a hybrid format. Therefore, identifying practical techniques to boost well-being which is equally effective for people's professional as well as personal lives is now more important than ever. This chapter proposes four distinct, contemporary and established techniques to boost well-being [12]. By focusing on both the working and private life domains, this chapter also extends the field to a non-working environment, such as leisure. Leisure scholars show that engagement with leisure activities also promotes well-being [13], which has clear linkages to Therapeutic Recreation Practice [14]. The four techniques selected have been shown to significantly boost people's well-being, in both a professional setting and the personal life domain.


The four techniques are aimed at increasing people's subjective well-being, also referred to as happiness [15]; also, according to Diener ([15], p. 108) the term happiness 'because of its varied popular meaning as it might refer to the global experience of well-being, the current feeling of joy or to the experience of much positive affect over time.' Subjective well-being is, however, clearly defined and characterised as a person's cognitive and affective evaluations of their life [16]. The cognitive component typically refers to people's positive evaluative judgements of their life (i.e., life satisfaction), whereas the affective component typically refers to the frequent experience of positive affect and the absence of negative affect [17]. Subjective well-being is a distinct form within the wider concept of well-being, which has been conceptualised and measured in different ways ranging from psychological well-being [18], physical well-being [19] or social well-being [20].
