Workplace Leaders

For competitive businesses or hard-pressed nonprofits or public agencies, focusing on employees' happiness can feel like a luxury. Yet research suggests fostering social and emotional well-being in a workplace leads to less turnover, fewer sick days, more productivity, and greater overall job satisfaction. Practicing skills like compassion, gratitude, empathy, and cooperation, in other words, is good for the bottom line. The GGSC tries to help leaders at every level of an organization put this research into practice.

In 2018, we are launching a new series of three courses on Happiness at Work. The first course, The Foundations of Happiness at Work, launches April 3, 2018.

In 2017, we launched two projects intended to support workplace leaders: our OpenIDEO Challenge to inspire innovative ideas for gratitude in workplaces, and our upcoming conference on Gratitude & Well-Being at Work, held November 17, 2017, in San Francisco.

Other resources for workplace leaders include:

• The Workplace section of our online magazine, Greater Good, features articles, videos, and other resources explaining why and how to cultivate positive emotions and relationship on the job;
• Many of our events do the same, such as our past conference on Mindfulness and Well-Being at Work and our upcoming conference on Gratitude & Well-Being at Work;
• Our Greater Good in Action platform offers practical exercises that can help build happiness, resilience, kindness, and connection in the workplace;
• Organizations including Kaiser Permanente and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency have used our online gratitude journal, Thnx4, to help cultivate more gratitude and appreciation among their workforce;
• We also consult with select organizations to help them nurture more positive relationships among their employees and a more positive culture as a whole.

Indeed, our goal is not only to help individual employees identify effective, research-based strategies for managing their stress and deriving more meaning from their work. It is also to help leaders and entire organizations embed these strategies in their workplace culture, prioritizing positive relationships and a leadership style that embodies social and emotional intelligence.