Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters: The Science Behind Employee Happiness and Organizational Performance

The most comprehensive, in-depth picture yet of workplace wellbeing and its key drivers, providing new perspective on the intersection of happiness, productivity, and organizational success.

Most of us spend a third of our waking lives at work. Work sets our schedules, influences our relationships, shapes our identities, and drives our economies. But is it actually making us happy?

This is a deep and profoundly important question, and now leading Oxford researchers Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward provide the richest, most comprehensive picture yet of workplace wellbeing. In Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters, the authors provide clarity on what workplace wellbeing is (and is not), and how to think about and approach it as a business.

Mining a variety of the largest and most in-depth data sources--including a unique, massive dataset gathered in partnership with the jobs platform Indeed--the book illustrates the remarkable ways in which wellbeing at work varies across workers, companies, industries, and geographies. It also provides new, data-driven insights into the origins of workplace happiness and how to effectively move the needle on improving our working lives.

Drawing on work in economics, psychology, sociology, management, and other disciplines, the authors explain that workplace wellbeing includes both how we think about our work as a whole and how we feel while we’re at work. They show, using innovative new data and empirical methods, that improving wellbeing can help raise productivity as well as aid in the retention and recruitment of talent--ultimately leading to companies’ better financial performance.

With keen insight and nuanced analysis, Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters dispels myths and tests assumptions that have arisen amidst an often-confusing cacophony of voices on wellbeing at work. It also provides a firm foundation and indispensable resource for leaders as they shape the future of work.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve is Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the University of Oxford, where he also directs the Well-Being Research Centre. His research has been published in top academic journals, including Science, Nature, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Psychological Science, Management Science, Journal of Political Economy, and the British Medical Journal. His research was selected among ＂The Management Ideas That Mattered Most＂ by Harvard Business Review. He is the coauthor, with Richard Layard, of the main textbook on wellbeing science and an editor of the World Happiness Report.

George Ward is a Junior Research Fellow in Economics at Somerville College, University of Oxford. He completed his PhD at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. His work has been published in leading academic journals, such as Management Science, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American Psychologist, Harvard Business Review, and the American Journal of Political Science. He is a coauthor of the book The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course.