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Productive Doesn’t Always Mean Present, But It Helps

Forbes

Research from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford found that the most productive employees are happy ones. Its study of workers at a contact center over a six-month period found that when workers were happier, they made more calls per hour, and converted more of those calls into sales. The researchers also found that happy workers do not work more hours than their discontented colleagues – they are simply more productive during their time at work.

Habits that kill productivity

Business Daily

Incorporating additional insights from a study by Clement Bellet, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, and George Ward, it is evident that happiness substantially increases productivity within workplaces.

Conducted within a large telecommunications company, the study leverages natural variations in employee mood influenced by weather exposure at work, revealing that happier employees show significantly higher sales performance.

What does work wellbeing have to do with business success? Everything, pretty much.

Business Insider

Since 2019, Indeed has partnered with leading experts at the University of Oxford to collect data on how employees feel at work, resulting in defined criteria for measuring work wellbeing: happiness, purpose, stress, and satisfaction. 

Additionally, Indeed measures what influences wellbeing, including foundational, social, and growth needs. Wellbeing data collection spans 19 countries and is publicly available on company pages in the US, Canada, and the UK, where Indeed’s Work Wellbeing Score has launched. 

Building upon this massive dataset — the world’s largest study of work wellbeing — Indeed has collaborated with the University of Oxford to create The Work Wellbeing 100, an index of the top 100 publicly traded companies ranked by the Work Wellbeing Score. These companies consistently outperformed leading stock indices, including the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and Russell 3000, showing that prioritizing wellbeing benefits people and business.

Top employers revealed by new Work Wellbeing 100

A new index of the top 100 publicly-traded companies in the US, powered by Oxford research, has been published by Indeed.

The 2024 Work Wellbeing 100 draws upon insights from the world’s largest study of workplace wellbeing, undertaken by global job matching and hiring platform Indeed alongside the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.

Work wellbeing – or how employees feel at work – is a critical factor for job seekers when deciding where to work, and plays a significant role for employers hoping to attract, hire and retain top talent.

Oxford researchers previously found that Indeed’s work wellbeing data shows a compelling correlation: higher work wellbeing leads to improved valuation, higher return on assets, and greater profits underscoring that employee satisfaction can serve as a predictor of a company’s business and financial success.

The top 10 companies on Indeed’s 2024 Work Wellbeing 100 are:

  1. H&R Block
  2. Delta Air Lines
  3. L3Harris
  4. Accenture
  5. NIKE
  6. Tradesmen International
  7. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products
  8. Addus HomeCare
  9. IBM
  10. Amazon Flex

“The employers on Indeed’s Work Wellbeing 100 list are setting an example and leading the way in creating thriving work environments,” said LaFawn Davis, Indeed’s Chief People and Sustainability Officer. “While work wellbeing has faced challenges in recent years, it’s more important than ever for companies to create environments where employees can truly thrive. By prioritizing work wellbeing, companies cultivate a more resilient, effective and happier workforce which ultimately drives business growth.”

The recognised companies represent a variety of industries across the US, ranging from healthcare to retail, to manufacturing, hospitality and tech. The retail and transportation industries are well represented on this list, with 23 and 14 companies respectively, showcasing the commitment to wellbeing. Regardless of their industry, employers on this list stand out for offering robust career growth opportunities and a commitment to flexible work options.

“Research consistently shows that how we feel at work matters.”

“Research consistently shows that how we feel at work matters. It deeply impacts our general wellbeing as well as company financial performance,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Professor of Economics at Saïd Business School and Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. “For employers, the wellbeing of their workforce cannot be underestimated as our research shows that those who prioritize wellbeing reap the rewards of higher productivity and improved employee retention and attraction. This is something we’ve now shown to be the case in both hard financial metrics as well as stock market performance.”

The companies on the Indeed Work Wellbeing 100 were determined based on employee feedback shared by US employees on Indeed across the four key wellbeing indicators between January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023. To qualify, companies in the US must be a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ or NYSE and have received at least 100 responses for work wellbeing indicators in the past year (Jan 1, 2023 – Dec 31, 2023).

Explore the 2024 Work Wellbeing 100 in full at indeed.com/employers/work-wellbeing-100.

Beyond the obvious, here are the business benefits of investing in employee wellbeing

Business Insider

Oxford recently analyzed Indeed’s work wellbeing dataset and highlighted a strong correlation between company wellbeing and business performance. The findings featured in the 2024 Global Work Wellbeing Report reveal that higher levels of employee wellbeing are associated with improved firm valuation, return on assets, and gross profits. Moreover, companies with higher levels of employee wellbeing collectively outperformed the stock market.

The Indeed-Oxford research also looked into whether happier employees today means better business results later. Based on data from before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings show that companies with happier workers before COVID-19 performed better afterward in all three performance indicators (valuation, return on assets, and gross profits). 

Moreover, the Indeed-Oxford research reveals the long-term business benefits of prioritizing employee wellbeing. Indeed further strengthened the business case for work wellbeing with the launch of the Work Wellbeing 100, an index ranking the top 100 publicly traded companies by their Indeed Work Wellbeing Score.

Indeed Introduces the 2024 Work Wellbeing 100, Ranking the Top Publicly-Traded Companies for Work Wellbeing in the U.S.

Business Wire

“Research consistently shows that how we feel at work matters. It deeply impacts our general wellbeing as well as company financial performance,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Professor of Economics at Saïd Business School and Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University. “For employers, the wellbeing of their workforce cannot be underestimated as our research shows that those who prioritize wellbeing reap the rewards of higher productivity and improved employee retention and attraction. This is something we’ve now shown to be the case in both hard financial metrics as well as stock market performance.”

Indeed Introduces the 2024 Work Wellbeing 100, Ranking the Top Publicly-Traded Companies for Work Wellbeing in the U.S.

Yahoo Finance

Fueled by the world’s largest study of work wellbeing and in partnership with the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, Indeed’s Work Wellbeing 100 reveals that public companies with higher work wellbeing outperform the market. These recognized companies prove wellbeing is not just better for people, but better for business.

Companies that ‘prioritize work flexibility’ have the happiest workers, new ranking shows

CNBC

H&R Block can now claim it offers the happiest and most stress-free workplace around.

The tax preparation company came in No. 1 for employee wellbeing, according to the 2024 Work Wellbeing 100 from Indeed and the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre.

The index ranks the top 100 publicly traded U.S. companies where employees reported high levels of happiness, purpose, satisfaction, and low stress when prompted to take a survey while leaving a review of their employer on Indeed. And those high marks could be driving better business performance.

IIM Ahmedabad, Ranchi, Harvard and others offer courses on happiness: Do you know why?

The Times of India

Happiness plays a vital role in enhancing productivity. Research consistently shows that when individuals are happier, they are more engaged, energized, and effective in their work. Research conducted by Oxford University has underscored the critical connection between happiness and productivity in the workplace.

[…]

The findings indicate that happy workers are more efficient during their working hours, though they do not necessarily work longer hours.

Voters’ feelings matter: large-scale study highlights predictive power of negative emotions on election results

  • Study of more than 150 countries and analysis of over 2 billion tweets highlights link between negative emotions and populist vote shares at general elections
  • Researchers examined ‘negative affect’ including feelings of fear, anger, sadness and depression among members of the voting public

Politicians and pollsters alike should pay greater attention to sadness and despair among voters, after a large-scale study highlighted the power of negative emotions in predicting election results.

Research published in the journal American Psychologist uses data from more than 150 countries1 and analysis of over 2 billion tweets to not only demonstrate a link between populist2 vote share and feelings such as fear and anger, but also with the “often overlooked” feelings of sadness and depression.

The findings highlight what Gallup CEO, Jon Clifton, has described elsewhere as a “blind spot” for politicians and election pollsters, who have missed the global rise of negative emotions over the past two decades. Indeed, none of the prominent forecasting models currently deployed to predict election outcomes include these emotions – referred to by researchers as ‘negative affect’ – as a predictor.

More than 4 billion people, over half the world’s population, have had or will have the opportunity to vote in national or regional elections in 2024.3

An interdisciplinary team of researchers – spanning economics, psychology, and computer science – from the University of Oxford, Stony Brook University, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Zurich, University of Cambridge, and Columbia University collaborated on the study.

They combined self-reported data on negative emotions from across the globe with analysis of sentiment within public posts on Twitter (now X), and compared trends in negative affect with data on populist beliefs and attitudes as well as, importantly, actual election results at scale. The research found that negative affect is a strong predictor of both populist beliefs and higher populist vote shares. The data also suggest, however, that once they are in power, incumbent populists no longer gain from negative affect among discontented voters.

The researchers found that negative affect – not only ‘high-activation’ negative emotions such as anger and anxiety, but also ‘low-activation’ emotions such as depression and sadness – significantly predicted populist outcomes in the case of:

  • Beliefs and attitudes in surveys using data from more than 150 countries globally;
  • General election results within European countries between 2005 and 2018;
  • Vote shares for Donald Trump in the USA at both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections;
  • Area-level vote shares in the 2016 Brexit vote as well as vote shares for the Brexit Party and subsequent European parliamentary elections.

Dr George Ward, Junior Research Fellow in Economics at the University of Oxford, where he is affiliated with Somerville College and the Wellbeing Research Centre, and lead author of the study, said: “It has become political lore that the state of the main economic indicators is what determines elections. But a growing body of evidence shows that how people are feeling matters just as much, if not more.

“Even if the economy is doing well from an objective standpoint, if voters are regularly experiencing large amounts of negative emotions – like sadness, anger, and fear – then the data suggests that there is fertile ground for populists to make electoral gains.”

“Negative emotions such as anger, fear and sadness are a fertile ground for populists.”

Dr Jochen Menges, Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School and Director of the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work at the University of Zurich, and a co-author of the study, said: “Emotions matter for how people vote. Negative emotions such as anger, fear and sadness are a fertile ground for populists. In a year in which half of humanity goes to vote, our research calls for all politicians to alleviate rather than avail themselves of negative emotions.”

Dr Andrew Schwartz, Associate Professor in Computer Science and Director of HLAB (Human Language Analysis Beings) at Stony Brook University and a co-author of the study, said: “Analyzing digital language has come a long way. It can supplement traditional surveys with measurements of life, as lived online, and recent methods are making such measurement accurate by, for example, producing more representative statistics from biased samples. All of this makes it possible to measure emotion at scales never before possible.”

“Populist leaders thrive on tapping into negative emotions to gain power at the ballot box.”

Dr Sandra Matz, the David W. Zalaznick Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and a co-author of the study, said: “Populist leaders thrive on tapping into negative emotions to gain power at the ballot box, but their hold on power becomes precarious once in office. Once elected, they need to deliver on their promises of radical change to keep the backing of an emotionally charged electorate.

“Our research challenges conventional wisdom, revealing that negative emotions among voters not only call for change but also demand accountability from those in power. In today’s turbulent political landscape, understanding these dynamics is vital for any populist incumbent seeking to stay in the voters’ good graces.”

The Role of Negative Affect in Shaping Populist Support: Converging Field Evidence from Across the Globe’ is published in American Psychologist.

  1. As measured in the Gallup World Poll and Global Happiness and Political Attitudes Survey
  2. ‘Populist’ as defined by the ideational model of populism and measured in a European context by the PopuList.
  3. As reported by The Economist, “2024 is the biggest election year in history”.