In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey’s Vanessa Burke chats with Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, about Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters: The Science Behind Employee Happiness and Organizational Performance (Harvard Business Review Press, Spring 2025), coauthored with INSEAD assistant professor George Ward. De Neve shares data analysis on the feelings and motivations of millions of job seekers and identifies key drivers that influence their workplace well-being. He explains why workplace well-being varies across companies and provides evidence-based ideas for business leaders who seek to improve productivity, recruitment, and retention.
One of those studies is the World Happiness Report, produced by a team that includes Prof Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. He agrees with Prof Duffy. Across the western world, the happiness benefit that comes with youth “has really disappeared in today’s generation,” he says. The extent of the change is the most obvious in children currently at school, where “that first leg of the U-curve where people report being happiest in their teens is literally gone”. People in their 20s, meanwhile, are “living their midlife crises right now”. Someone my age is about as happy as the average 45-year-old was in the year 2000, Prof De Neve estimates.
It’s not a decision without consequences. For Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, professor of economics and well-being at the University of Oxford and one of the index’s editors, “there is a very direct correlation between loneliness and unhappiness.” Furthermore, self-imposed loneliness, no matter how much it may seem to respond to an individual or generational trend and, therefore, may seem “short-term satisfying,” is a source of emotional imbalance and loss of well-being.
The happiest countries in the world, according to De Neve, continue to be Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. That is, precisely those where, among many other factors, the loneliness epidemic seems to have progressed the least in recent years.
The world of work for many people in 2025 “isn’t necessarily a positive place,” says Jan-Emmanuel De Neve.
Five years after the COVID pandemic increased the focus on mental health and wellbeing at work, “the pendulum is swinging back” to a pre-COVID era, the Oxford Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science believes, with a shift away from the human case for investing in workplace wellbeing.
There is a pressing need for a universal measure of children’s wellbeing, parallel to the WELLBY, for use in cost-benefit analysis. Currently, there is no consensus on how to value the wellbeing of children, raising concerns that their welfare is being undervalued in policy decisions. In this report, we discuss the issues inherent in measuring children’s wellbeing and investigate a policy-oriented solution: the C-WELLBY. Children aged 10 and above generally demonstrate stable, valid responses to evaluative life satisfaction questions, as evidenced by analyses of both Understanding Society and the Active Lives of Children and Young People Survey. Consequently, we recommend the use of WELLBYs, valued at the usual £15,920 in 2024 prices (HMT, 2021), for cost-benefit analyses of policy affecting this age group. For children aged below 10, we recommend estimating a C-WELLBY, also valued at £15,920.
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the director of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre and an editor of the World Happiness Report, said: “This year’s report pushes us to look beyond traditional determinants like health and wealth.
“It turns out that sharing meals and trusting others are even stronger predictors of wellbeing than expected. In this era of social isolation and political polarisation we need to find ways to bring people around the table again – doing so is critical for our individual and collective wellbeing.”
In partnership with Reapra, the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford has welcomed a pair of world-class researchers to spearhead its emerging research stream in sustainable wellbeing.
Paul Behrens (Reapra Senior Research Fellow) and Annegeke Jansen (Reapra Research Associate) join the Centre’s team of interdisciplinary researchers to examine long-term questions around human wellbeing and environmental sustainability.
Their appointments are supported by Asia-based venture builder and investment group Reapra, whose mission is to co-create industries for the betterment of society through research and practice.
Paul Behrens is the British Academy Global Professor at the Oxford Martin School, whose research focuses on the environmental and social impacts of large-scale food system transformation. He is also the author of the popular science book, The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science (Indigo Press, 2021) and winner of the inaugural Frontiers Planet Prize.
Annegeke Jansen is currently a PhD candidate at Leiden University, focusing on the measurement of sustainable and inclusive wellbeing as part of the WISE Horizons project. In addition, she investigates determinants and historical developments related to wellbeing.
The pair have previously collaborated on major contributions to the Beyond GDP movement, published in The Lancet Planetary Health and Nature Scientific Data.
Paul Behrens, Reapra Senior Research Fellow, said: “I’m delighted to be collaborating at the critical intersection of human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. It is essential that we work towards improving wellbeing while both reducing our environmental impacts and dealing with environmental damage. Interdisciplinary collaboration with the Centre’s diverse, world-leading team is incredibly exciting.”
Annegeke Jansen, Reapra Research Associate, said: “I’m excited to join the Wellbeing Research Centre to explore the deep connections between human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. In a world facing ecological breakdown and growing inequalities, it’s crucial to rethink what truly supports flourishing lives—now and in the future. I look forward to working with the Centre’s interdisciplinary team and learning from their renowned expertise in wellbeing research.”
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at Saïd Business School, Oxford, and Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre, said: “With the appointment of Paul and Annegeke we gain the expertise of two leading scholars who are building bridges between the academic fields focussed on sustainability and subjective wellbeing. If our aim is to advance the wellbeing of current and future generations then it is critical to turn our attention to the notion of sustainable wellbeing.
“We are tremendously grateful to our like-minded colleagues at Reapra who have made these fellowships possible and we look forward to our partnership generating tangible insights that will hopefully underpin policy action in due course.”
Laura Lynn Lee, Growth & Wellbeing Catalyst at Reapra, said: “This is indeed an exciting time for Reapra as we welcome Paul and Annegeke to our research and practice community. We look forward to learning together with them and Jan’s team at the Wellbeing Research Centre as we co-create Reapra’s vision of long-term wellbeing for the next generation.”
Most of us spend a third of our waking lives at work. Work shapes our schedules, relationships, identities, and economies – but is it actually making us happy?
This crucial question is explored in depth by leading Oxford researchers George Ward and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, who provide the richest, most comprehensive picture of workplace wellbeing yet.
In Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters, the authors clarify what workplace wellbeing is (and is not) and offer a framework for how businesses can approach and improve it. Drawing on extensive, large-scale data – including the world’s largest dataset on employee wellbeing, gathered in partnership with the jobs platform Indeed – the book reveals the remarkable ways in which wellbeing at work varies across workers, occupations, companies, and industries.
The authors present new, evidence-based insights into the origins of workplace wellbeing and how businesses can enhance the employee experience. Drawing on work from multiple academic disciplines, they show that workplace wellbeing encompasses both how we think about our work as a whole and how we feel while doing it. Their research demonstrates that improving wellbeing can boost productivity, aid in talent retention and recruitment, and ultimately improve financial performance.
With in-depth analysis and keen insight, Ward and De Neve debunk myths and test assumptions amidst an often-confusing cacophony of voices on wellbeing at work. Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters provides a firm foundation and indispensable resource for leaders seeking to shape the future of work.