At the Happiness Camp Foundation in Portugal, meeting rooms had labels like “Playful Pitstop” and “Dopamine Hub.” A two-day conference on “Happiness in the Workplace” in September could easily be seen as a corporate whim. But the list of global companies in attendance – IKEA, Lidl, Adidas, and others – shows that more companies are taking this topic seriously.
“We all know that happy employees are more productive, more creative and more motivated, yet study after study shows that happiness levels at work are often very low,” says Antonio Pinto, the conference's 26-year-old founder.
Some companies create a role to fix the problem: the chief happiness officer.
Initially, the role of the 'CHO' was a combination of welfare manager, entertainment organizer and informal company advisor, but it began life in a playful way. Google's first nominee to the position in early 2010 also liked to be known as the “Jolly Good Fellow.”
But research on positive psychology and employee performance shows a more stringent rationale for promoting joy in companies.
Workplace engagement is a favorable indicator. On the happiness scale, nearly eight in 10 employees (77 percent) sit somewhere between disaffected and dissatisfied, according to the latest global study by Gallup. The cost of lost productivity is estimated at $8.8 trillion.
So, if the problem facing CHOs is clear enough, what approaches do they take to solve it?
It's important to set some conceptual standards, says Helen Lawrence, co-founder of UK-based consultancy Happy Consultancy Group. “Happiness is a personal topic, with many different definitions,” she says. “This is perhaps to be expected for such a broad topic, but it also fuels a degree of cynicism.”
She is clear about what happiness is not: “drinking a beer on Friday” or “playing ping-pong.” These may be important – providing moments of happiness at work – but their impact, like their duration, is short-lived.
Instead, Lawrence points to deeper factors that drive psychological satisfaction, such as purpose, recognition, fulfillment, and belonging. It is worth noting that few, if any, of these are directly related to money, although pay increases are often the best option for companies to satisfy employees.
Likewise, Friday Pulse, a management tool that measures well-being, cites five key pillars: connection, challenge, equity, empowerment, and inspiration.
Lawrence adds that always being nice isn't necessarily an effective CHO's prerogative. People don't need empty platitudes, they need tools to stay positive and optimistic.
“In negative work cultures, where no one wants to bother anyone, not only does nothing get done, but problems don't get addressed,” she says.
Companies are advised to abandon generic approaches to promoting happiness, although perks such as flexible working or subsidized gym memberships are usually well received. What makes us satisfied at work varies from team to team and from individual to person.
When Tobias Haug started as COO of software company SAP's European operations in 2018, he found a sales-focused environment characterized by high adrenaline and a desire to achieve goals. He quickly realized that free coffee and lunchtime yoga weren't going to cut it.
Instead, he instigated a series of “micro-interventions” to empower teams and improve morale, such as induction sessions to help new hires put names to their faces, and asking teams to write a job profile for their new boss when a position becomes vacant.
SAP has 191 locations around the world. “If all of this is managed by a central team that wants to do everything the same way, it quickly becomes generic and you lose those local sensitivities,” says Hogg.
However, large organizations cannot expect to have a dedicated CHO at every location. Nuno Montero, chief human resources officer at Mimacom, a Swiss software and consulting company, suggests using local managers who know how their teams work. The CHO's job then becomes one of coordination, training and “spreading the message,” he says.
Arguably, much of the CHO's role is taken up by traditional HR departments. Proponents say a designated position can bring these activities together and give them a specific managerial focus.
“The COO must put happiness on the management agenda. So, when they ask questions like, ‘What do our employees actually want?’, the COO is there to answer,” says Monteiro.
But as most health officials will attest, having “happiness” in your job title can be a barrier to being taken seriously. SAP's Hogg gave up that title a month later, and now calls himself “Chief Humanitarian Officer.”
“The title CHO works great at cocktail parties…but the term carries so many emotional connotations that most people don't associate it with delivering business value.
In the case of Mimacom, its first and only CHO, hired in 2022, only lasted one year before the company pulled the plug. Monteiro explains that the company was partly consolidating. But although management “liked the idea,” they did not put it on the “daily agenda.”
Part of the problem is that happiness is a slippery scale to measure. It is highly subjective, and linking managerial interventions to individual or group outcomes is very difficult.
Friday Pulse suggests a list of 15 questions that yield an overall happiness score out of 100. These questions range from the general “How happy are you at work this week?”, to the more specific: “Do you feel free to be yourself?” ” Or “Do you feel that the work you are doing is worth it?”
Enthusiasts like Maddalena Carey, who founded the Happiness Business School, an accredited training provider, in 2018, recognize that corporate happiness has a way to go before it gets the management attention they believe it deserves. But Carrie notices a shift that gives her hope that she will become a bigger priority.
“Our ancestors worked tirelessly to ensure our survival. Our parents worked tirelessly to maintain their standards of living. “Today’s generations have more opportunities, so they are looking for things like quality of life, purpose and meaning.”
Message in response to this article:
Glad to see you championing chief happiness officers / By Paul Anand, author of Happiness Explained, The Open University, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK
