Recently, Lithuania topped the World Happiness Report ranking for under 30s, with the country’s young people rating themselves 7.76 out of 10 on the happiness scale. I completely understand why, especially as a young person living in Vilnius.
A new California Assembly committee is exploring the reasons why some people are happier with their lives than others. Headed by former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood), the Select Committee on Happiness and Public Policy Outcomes has had two hearings this year.
“We don’t take happiness seriously,” Rendon said. “We think of happiness as some frivolous, silly thing but it’s really the only thing that matters.”
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“This is an area where California and the United States are very, very far behind the rest of the world at looking at this issue.”
There is a positive association between the level of economic development and national levels of overall life satisfaction (OLS) in the adult population, with decreasing marginal returns. However, research shows no association in early adolescence and a negative association in middle adolescence. We hypothesize that this is due to the exclusion of low-income countries, where adolescent wellbeing is rarely collected. 2015–2019 Gallup World Poll data from 139 countries in middle adolescence (age 15–17; n 36,907) were analysed using linear regression to study the association between country levels of economic development and OLS, positive emotions (PE), and negative emotions (NE), and how this varies across economic development levels, and gender. Variations across economic development levels were compared with those observed in the adult population. Log per-capita GDP is positively associated with OLS and PE, although in high-income countries no association is observed for PE, and among females for OLS. For NE, a negative association is observed in lower-income countries and a positive association in higher-income countries. In this age group (age 15–17), the log per-capita GDP – OLS association is stronger in lower-income countries than in higher-income countries, but this pattern reverses with age in adulthood. A nuanced relationship exists between economic development and adolescent wellbeing, which varies across measures, levels of economic development, gender, and age -including notable differences compared to adults. Our study highlights the need for improving child and adolescent wellbeing data worldwide, especially in lower-income countries, to better understand how best to support wellbeing globally.
The moment has come when leaders must stop pretending we care about engagement. Let’s quit asking workers to fill out surveys that everyone knows are insincere, “check-the-box” activities. Instead, leaders should start dedicating resources to not only measuring employee well-being, but actually committing to improving employee well-being.
Research suggests that employee well-being matters more to the success of a business than employee engagement. For instance, Oxford University researchers have determined that how people feel at work is the biggest driver of employee productivity. Consequently, focusing on improving employee well-being will lead to a massive win for employers and employees alike.
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.
Survey research is facing a multitude of challenges to its validity, especially for the study of labour and organisations. Online surveys with non-probability, convenience samples are simultaneously seen as part of the problem and a promising solution. Methodological literature argues that researchers should not think of data quality of online surveys in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but in degrees, with a series of recommendations scattered across disciplines for assessing and managing data limitations. We present a case study of a Big, multi-level, online, convenience sample of subjective work wellbeing, the Indeed Work Wellbeing Score survey (IWWS). IWWS is an ongoing international survey of subjective work wellbeing, with over 20,000,000 responses and growing. In this study we evaluate the UK subsample collected by October 2023 (N = 1,463,503). While a prima facie valuable source of data, the data generation process raises concerns of selection bias and inattentive responses. We evaluate the extent of bias, variation in bias, response rates, internal consistency and employer cluster-level reliability. We then turn to considering what types of research questions a researcher may want to answer with the data, especially unit comparisons at different survey units and inter-item relationships. Overall, we suggest that at the individual, employee level, the survey suffers from selection and binary bias in responses, but that at the employer-level IWWS offers a valuable resource to supplement existing random probability surveys of work and wellbeing. In our conclusions we offer practical methodological recommendations for others using Big, online convenience samples. Finally, we provide commentary on the strengths and limitations of the IWWS for ongoing and future research, as well as the value for businesses, jobseekers and policy-makers.
Given that work takes up a major part of many adults’ lives prior to retirement, we can assume that management approaches in these nations contribute to their citizens’ happiness.
So, what can leaders learn from the world’s happiest countries?
The World Happiness Report ranks countries based on a happiness measurement survey conducted by Gallup, where respondents evaluate the quality of their lives.
Lithuania was ranked 19th on the overall happiness list, but secured the top spot in the under-30 rankings.
Lithuania’s under-30s rated themselves 7.76 out of 10 on the happiness scale. In comparison, those in the same age group in the US rated themselves 6.392 out of 10, placing it 62nd globally.
“This is a great place,” she says, gesturing around the manicured square where we’re sitting, on the edge of the city’s new town. “It’s pretty awesome that you can get these kinds of opportunities here.”
So good are the opportunities and so high is the level of optimism that Lithuania topped this year’s World Happiness Report rankings for the under-30s. The country’s gen-Zers and millennials rated themselves 7.76 out of 10 on the happiness scale, miles ahead of the UK and the US, at 32nd and 62nd respectively. While the report sounded alarm bells about young people’s welfare in the west, Lithuania’s twentysomethings could set to work meme-ifying and TikTokking about the confirmation that they had it pretty good.
With the world’s largest economy and its highest GDP, you might think the United States would have the world’s happiest citizens. But you’d be wrong. This year, when the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network released its annual World Happiness Report, the U.S. had dropped out of the top 20, landing at 23rd on the list. The reason? America’s youth are deeply unhappy. What societal and cultural factors are at play here? Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Centre and a professor of economics and behavioral science, joins The Excerpt to share his insights into what truly makes people happy.