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Beauty therapists and hairdressers are the happiest at work, a new survey shows.
The poll of 1,000 adults found workers are more likely to be happy in their job if they get on well with colleagues or have managers who take an interest in them.

And fewer than half stayed in a job because of the size of their pay packet.

The study, for City & Guilds, said beauty therapists and hairdressers were the happiest workers in the UK - with builders and bankers the least content with their working lives.
"With a clear impact on the bottom line, improving workplace happiness is rising up the business agenda and employers cannot afford to ignore it," Bob Coates, managing director of City & Guilds, said.

"Companies can no longer rely on those established reward and recognition policies that fail to resonate with employees and do little to combat stress levels in the workplace.

"By taking such a blinkered approach, they risk the rise of an unmotivated and unproductive workforce, and even potentially losing their staff to competitors."
Occupational psychology expert Professor Cary Cooper, of Lancaster University, said: "It provides a call to action for the business community to rethink its reward and recognition strategies and consider employees' needs on an individual basis.

"It marks the end of an era for organisation-wide HR policies.

"From now on a flexible approach is needed if businesses are to create a happy, and by association productive, workforce."

The job "happiness index":

Beauty therapists
Hairdressers
The Armed Forces
Catering/chefs
Retail staff
Teachers
Marketing/public relations
Accountants
Secretaries/receptionists
Plumbers
Engineers
Architects
Journalists
Mechanics/automotive
Human resources
Call centre
IT specialists
Nurses
Banker/finance
Builders/construction