Why Every Organization Needs a Chief Happiness Officer
By Tia Graham, Author of Be a Happy Leader and Founder of Arrive At Happy and
Karen Guggenheim, Co-Founder of WOHASU and The World Happiness Summit
It is imperative that every organization has a Chief Happiness Officer on their team. The most important resource of any organization is its people, especially when they are outstanding at what they do. A Chief Happiness Officer partners with the executive leadership team, people leaders, and management team to inspire and train leaders, managers, and supervisors to increase the experienced happiness of employees while they are working. CHOs take a wholistic approach to people’s well-being and consider all aspects of people’s lives and needs. Certified Chief Happiness Officers’ are not there to solely plan fun activities and team bonding experiences. They use research-based strategies to support all people leaders in the company.
According to LinkedIn data, there’s been a 13% growth in existing job titles that reference culture or well-being compared to 2019. This is great news for companies, leaders, and employees. Well-being is defined by the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.
Here are some current examples of Well-Being or Happiness titles and Fortune 500 companies today:
SAP: Chief Happiness Officer
Coca-Cola: Benefits and Well-Being Manager
Ernst & Young: Chief Well-Being Officer
Google: Chief Happiness Officer
Unilever: Chief Health & Well-Being Officer
Rakuten: Chief Well-Being Officer
TikTok: Global Well-Being Program Manager
Deloitte: Chief Well-Being Officer
Siemens: Head of Wealth & Well-Being
Delta Airlines: Manager of Well-Being
Air B&B: Global Head of Employee Experience
Mount Sinai Health System: Chief Wellness Officer
SLACK: Sr. VP of Employee Success
Here are the key reasons why every company needs a CHO:
1) When employees are experiencing happiness at work, they have more pleasant, feel-good emotions such as joy, excitement, calm, connection, and motivation, than painful emotions such as anger, stress, and anxiety. Emotions drive behavior. When people are feeling happy while they are working, they are more productive, creative and experimental, motivated, take better care of customers and each other, and will stay at their organization. Happiness at work directly connects to the business results of a company. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency to invest in employee wellbeing. By focusing mainly on external results associated with stressors we miss the opportunity to improve work productivity, performance and health. Instead, we can invest in internal solutions that can positively impact overall employee wellbeing, increasing innovation threefold, productivity by 31%, employee engagement 10X(HBR), and decrease burnout by 125% (Greenberg & Arawaka). A highly engaged workforce has a 41% reduction in absenteeism, 21% increase in productivity, and 24-59% less turnover (Gallup). Positively transforming organizations involves fostering a language of wellbeing, aligning values, connecting with meaning, and communicating success.
2) In 2022, more than 4 million people have resigned each month either to seek new jobs or change careers entirely. The massive shift in people’s attitudes towards their jobs shows no signs of slowing down. The cost of losing an employee is very expensive. Losing an employee also puts businesses at risk of losing productivity, morale, creativity, customer satisfaction, profit, and time. Employee retention is the ability of a business or organization to retain its employees and can be represented by a simple statistic.
3) Chief Happiness Officers support an organization’s mental health strategy. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 21% of U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2020 (52.9 million people). This represents 1 in 5 adults. Across the U.S. economy, serious mental illness causes $193.2 billion in lost earnings each year. By focusing on employee’s mental health overall, they will increase morale, teamwork, and productivity. Mental health sick days will also decrease.
4) CHOs support recruiting, hiring, and retention. When candidates are researching companies that they could work for, they investigate the benefits, perks, and the culture of the organization. They might review glassdoor ratings and read about the values of the organization. Knowing that a company is investing in the happiness and well-being of the employees will make the company look a lot more attractive to them. During the hiring process, people will learn about the happiness strategies and initiatives that the company is taking. This will make the new hires excited to join the team as they will connect their professional career goals and success to their overall well-being as a person. Finally, having a Chief Happiness Officer will support the goals of loyalty and decreasing unwanted turnover. CHOs are a resource for all people leaders and share research-based strategies on how to increase morale and keep high motivation and engagement.
5) Managers and supervisors will be trained on how to be a positive manager. Positive managers are top performers, both at the individual and organizational level. Research has demonstrated that work practices aligned with personal and collective growth, values and purpose have positive effects on satisfaction and resilience, thus strengthening innovation, participation, trust, and retention. The positive domino effect sparked by positive practices, inevitably fuels job performance, and increases firm productivity.
The world of work has changed and will continue to evolve. In many ways, work is becoming more human, and people have higher expectations for how companies support their overall level of well-being and happiness. Organizations that invest in internal and external Chief Happiness Officers and focus on positive relationships and driving results will grow faster, be more innovated, attract and retain top talent, and get the very best work out of people.