Viewing archives for Micah Kaats

Sharing meals with others: How sharing meals supports happiness and social connections

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Andrew Dugan, Micah Kaats, and Alberto Prati

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore links between sharing meals, social connections, and wellbeing. Although the topic of sharing meals has remained relatively understudied in the academic literature, the connection between food and social relationships is far from new. In French, copain (friend) and in Italian compagno (mate) come from the Latin cum+‎pānis, literally “with-bread”. The Chinese term for companion/partner, 伙伴, stems from a similar term (火伴) which literally translates to “fire mate”, a reference to sharing meals over a campfire.

The World Happiness Report is published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent editorial board.

Any views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation, agency, or program of the United Nations.

Researchers share initial findings from landmark happiness study

In its next phase, the Health and Happiness Study aims to collect wellbeing data from over 10,000 global participants using surveys, smartphones, and wearable devices.

Researchers at Harvard and Oxford universities today (Saturday) announced early results from the Health and Happiness Study – the first large-scale study of its kind, which seeks to identify predictors of happiness and wellbeing using data from smartphones and Garmin smartwatches.

The pilot study, primarily comprised of Garmin associates in North America and Europe, revealed several statistically significant findings. And while initial results need to be corroborated through the larger global study, they illustrated an important relationship between sleep, exercise and happiness.

Key findings include:

Participants consistently report more frequent positive emotions than negative emotions, suggesting that people generally do feel more happy than unhappy on a day-to-day basis.
Ideal times of day for happiness and wellbeing varied considerably across subjects, with some individuals showing greater signs of emotional wellbeing in the mornings, and others in the afternoon or evenings.
Daily physical activity and adequate sleep measured by Garmin devices were strongly correlated with higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress.
Emotional stability varied by age, with older adults showing more stability than younger adults.
The study demonstrated high retention rates, suggesting participants found value in self-monitoring emotions during the day.
Respondents were happiest when involved in cultural and social activities, eating, or spending time with friends and family.

After receiving ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the pilot study was launched by Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers – in collaboration with the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, the University of Warwick, the University of Saskatchewan, Avicenna and Garmin – at the Lugano Happiness Forum in Switzerland on June 18, 2024.

Now, after successfully completing two initial pilot studies, the Health and Happiness Study is expanding to include more than 10,000 participants from across the globe.

Micah Kaats, the Principal Investigator for the study and affiliated with both Harvard and Oxford universities, said: “By leveraging large-scale data from smartphones, smartwatches, and surveys collected from a global sample population, we aim to uncover new insights into the drivers and determinants of health and happiness for people around the world.”

Surveys are sent to respondents’ smartphones three times per day, asking them about their moods, emotions, and activities directly preceding the survey. Those reports are then cross-referenced with data from Garmin wearables and smartphones to provide a nuanced, qualitative and quantitative representation of how wellbeing impacted by variables like physical activity, sleep, socialization and stress.

Susan Lyman, Garmin Vice President of Consumer Sales and Marketing, added: “As a collaborator on more than 1,000 research studies and clinical trials, the Garmin Health team is honored to work with academic researchers at Harvard and Oxford University on this groundbreaking study to better understand the intersection of happiness and health.”

The Health and Happiness Study is currently accepting applicants to participate in the global study. Participants can learn more and sign up on the study website: www.healthandhappinessstudy.com.

While preferable, participants do not need a Garmin smartwatch to join the study. All participants who join will be eligible to receive free Garmin products and discounts, as well as individualised wellbeing reports that provide detailed insights into their own personal health and happiness.

3 Policies to Guide a Pro-Growth, Pro-Worker Economy Under Trump

Harvard Business Review

There is a powerful business case to be made for increasing the economic status of the lowest paid workers. Lower levels of inequality are correlated with higher overall economic growth that benefits every member of society, including shareholders. Companies with the best employee practices create sustained long-term value for their shareholders, as shown by new research conducted by the global hiring platform Indeed and the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre. This point is further demonstrated by funds that track companies with pro-worker policies, such as the Just 100 Index and the ETF Harbor Human Capital Factor (HAPI) that have consistently outperformed the Russell 1000 and S&P 500, respectively.

Global mental health crisis hits workplaces

Financial Times

A recent study by Oxford university researchers, using data from the recruitment website Indeed, illustrated the business case for investing in improving workplace mental health.

Analysing responses from 1mn workers at 1,782 publicly listed US companies, it found a “strong positive relationship between employee wellbeing and the firm’s performance”, said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Oxford economics professor and the project’s leader.

A simulated share portfolio of the 100 companies that scored highest in Indeed’s wellbeing surveys consistently outperformed the main stock market indices.

“We have found that how people feel at work is consistently a good leading indicator of future market and financial performance,” said De Neve. Since January 2021, the portfolio had performed 11 per cent better than the S&P 500, he added.

Workplace wellbeing: Stop focusing on individual ‘fixes’ and address the elephant in the room

HR Zone

Before employers throw their hands up in the air and cancel their subscriptions to digital wellbeing apps and mental health platforms, let’s be clear on one thing: wellbeing is a crucial investment in the workplace.

According to a recent study by the Wellbeing Research Centre, organisations with higher subjective wellbeing outperform the stock market. And not just by a small margin. They saw an 11% greater return than the S&P 500 in the first half of 2024.

Given that investing in wellbeing is a business and people imperative, that still leaves us with the question of how to make workplace wellbeing work for your organisation. Earlier this year, a new study by Oxford University’s William Fleming examined the impact of various wellbeing interventions such as mindfulness classes and wellbeing apps. It found that almost none of these solutions had any statistically significant impact on employee wellbeing.

Work Wellbeing Playbook: A Systematic Review of Evidence-Based Interventions to Improve Employee Wellbeing

Sarah Cunningham, William Fleming, Cherise Regier, Micah Kaats, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve

Abstract

The Work Wellbeing Playbook is a concise guide that distils insights from a large-scale systematic literature review of workplace wellbeing interventions. It presents high level insights in an accessible, and plain English format for ease-of use.

With support from Indeed, and in collaboration with our academic partner at the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, the World Wellbeing Movement has curated this Playbook of evidence-based interventions categorised by 12 key drivers of workplace wellbeing.

The researchers reviewed more than 3,000 academic studies of workplace wellbeing interventions to identify strategies proven to increase the wellbeing of employees across diverse work environments. Recognising that business leaders often face time constraints, we have condensed the key insights into this open-access resource and distilled them into an accessible, high-level summary to support busy professionals.

This playbook builds upon the World Wellbeing Movement’s science-based recommendations for how to measure both how employees are feeling at work, and why they are feeling that way – just like the Indeed Work Wellbeing Score, also created alongside experts from the Wellbeing Research Centre, does. Once you have collected the data, you can then use this Playbook to address the areas for improvement within your organisation.

Business leaders are recommended to keep diversity top of mind when leveraging the playbook to craft a holistic employee wellbeing strategy for their organisation. When choosing interventions, employers should consider factors such as their workplace environment, industry, geographical location, and the unique needs of their employees.

Although there is no magic formula, and all interventions have their limitations, many companies start to affect positive change when they combine multiple interventions (organisational-level interventions, group-level interventions and individual-level interventions) across multiple drivers of employee wellbeing.

Link between wellbeing and productivity is made ‘clear’

Financial Times

The good news, says William Fleming, research fellow at Oxford university’s Wellbeing Research Centre, is that there is a “clear link between subjective wellbeing and productivity”.

He points to two recent studies that show happier workers make more sales, and wellbeing at work can boost financial performance. They support the business case for tending to staff happiness, he argues. “This is without considering absence rates because of mental health and costs of employee turnover.”

Companies reap bigger dividends from happier staff

Financial Times

For academics Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward at the University of Oxford, and Micah Kaats at Harvard University, it is no surprise, then, that the company’s share price has performed so strongly: their recent study provides the clearest link yet between staff wellbeing and financial performance in quoted US companies. “We find that higher levels of wellbeing generally predict higher firm valuations, higher return on assets, higher gross profits, and better stock market performance,” they write in a 42-page paper.

Happiest companies better in multiple measures of firm performance

Firm value, return on assets and profits all higher for companies with higher workplace wellbeing scores
Top 100 ‘happiest’ companies outperform S&P 500 and Dow Jones by 20% since 2021
Researchers analyse data from more than 1,600 US companies and 15 million employee surveys in partnership with jobs site Indeed

Companies with higher employee wellbeing scores outperform their counterparts in multiple traditional measures of firm performance, new research has found.

Investment in the top 100 US workplaces ranked by employee wellbeing would have returned 20% more than the same investment in the S&P 500 or Dow Jones over the same two-year period.

The findings are published in the most comprehensive study to date linking employee wellbeing to financial and stock market performance, led by researchers from the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford and Harvard University.

They worked in partnership with the jobs site Indeed, whose Workplace Wellbeing Score is the largest survey of employee wellbeing anywhere in the world with more than 15 million responses collected since its launch in 2019.

The researchers analysed data from more than 1,600 US listed companies whose employees reported anonymously on four key measures: Job satisfaction; Purpose; Happiness; and Stress¹, and compared this against publicly available annual accounting data. They found that, on average, higher levels of employee wellbeing were associated with increased firm value, higher return on assets, and higher profits. Pre-pandemic measures of workplace wellbeing also subsequently predicted higher levels of firm performance following the Covid-19 outbreak.

In a separate analysis, the researchers also ranked the top 100 firms by employee wellbeing scores. Starting on January 1, 2021, they ‘invested’ a hypothetical $1,000 dollars into this new wellbeing-oriented portfolio and saw a greater return than equivalent investments in the main US stock indices.

This higher performance held true in both the so-called bull market of sustained growth through much of 2021 and the bear market of prolonged decline in 2022.

‘Workplace Wellbeing and Firm Performance’ is open access and available as part of the Wellbeing Research Centre’s Working Paper Series.

https://wellbeing.hmc.ox.ac.uk/article/wp-2303-measuring-workplace-wellbeing

Micah Kaats

Micah is a Research Associate at the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford. He has also worked as an Analyst at the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen and Research Assistant at the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization (EHERO). Micah is committed to developing evidence-based tools for public and private decision-makers to promote subjective wellbeing. He holds two Master’s degrees in Economic Policy and Applied Ethics from Utrecht University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from UPenn. He has contributed to academic publications and reports on subjective wellbeing, cost-benefit analysis, and policy evaluation. His research interests converge around topics in health, work, aging, and migration. He is based in Amsterdam.