Meik Wiking on Designing Happier Workplaces in an AI World

Great Expectations Podcast – Episode 4: Meik Wiking

Meik Wiking:

It's becoming a new metric of progress. So instead of just considering, are we getting richer, politicians and statisticians are, are looking at, are we in fact getting happier also?

Paul Sephton:

Hi, I'm Paul, and this is Great ExpectAItions, the Jabra podcast that explores how technology is reshaping the way we work and live. What does it really mean to be happy at work? And in a world of digital burnout overload and rising AI adoption, is it getting harder or easier to get there? To help answer that, I'm joined today by Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute, and author of Global Bestsellers. Like the Little Book of Hygge, Mike's work blends hard data with human stories, helping governments, cities, and companies designed for real wellbeing. In this episode, we dig into what drives happiness at work, why purpose still matters, and how AI might help us focus more on what we love or risk eroding what makes us human. After months of working together, this is a podcast that I'm particularly excited for. And so thank you so much for making the time today.

Meik Wiking:

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul Sephton:

The obvious question to start with is around happiness. This is. What you've devoted, I, I might almost say your entire life to, but when you say happiness, what exactly are we measuring? Life evaluation, daily, mood, purpose.

Meik Wiking:

All of the above you are you are exactly right. Happiness is a wide, complex, subjective term. you have one perception of happiness. I have another one, which is fine in everyday conversation, but when you wanna approach happiness from a scientific point of view, you need to make sure that we are actually talking about the same thing. and I like to use the analogy of, the economy because the economy is also a, a wide complex term. because when we talk about how is the Danish or the American economy doing, we would break it down into smaller components. We would talk about, you know, inflation, we talk about tariffs, we would talk about unemployment rate, interest rates, uh, GDP per capita exports, the stock market. All those metrics gives us a more precise, more nuanced language to discuss how's the Danish or American economy doing? So I think that's also what we need to do when, when it comes to happiness. So OECD created a guideline for measuring subjective, wellbeing And they advise. Researchers to look at at least three different dimensions of wellbeing. Uh, first of all, the overall life satisfaction. How satisfied are you with your life? How happy are you overall? That's actually typically the one that goes into the world having to support. Uh, specifically they use a question, asking respondents to, consider a ladder with steps from zero to 10. And step zero represents the worst possible life you could live. Step 10 represents the best possible life you could live. that's a very stable, dimension that catches what you would imagine impacts people's lives. So, disease, uh, employment, unemployment, relationship status. but it's not influenced by what day of the week you ask people or whether it, it rains or the sunshine. We can see that's the case for the second dimension, which has, been, been labeled the affective dimension, which has more to do. What, what kind of mood do people experience in the here and now? So you could say yesterday, again, from a scale from from zero to 10, how happy were you Yesterday there you would see a lot of volatility and we can see people are happy on Fridays than they are on, on, on Mondays and Tuesdays on that one. Of course the first and second dimension are correlated. They're linked because if you have a lot of every days with positive emotions where you feel happy, you are also more likely to be satisfied with, with your life overall. In the third dimension, builds on Aristotles. So the Greek philosophers, his perception of the good life and, and to him the good life is the meaningful life. So do people have a sense of purpose or me? So we like to look at all three dimensions. are people satisfied, about their life? Are people happy in their life and do they have a, a sense of purpose,

Paul Sephton:

And you've said that, you mentioned it was sort of the analogy you give to the economy and you've said that happiness is the new GDP. What first convinced you way back when that sort of subjective wellbeing deserved this type of, hard measurement?

Meik Wiking:

What brought me into happiness research in the first place was, was actually the World Happiness Report, uh, which first came out in, 2012. So it's, it's a. Un commissioned report and the first report, like it does every year. It, it gives an overview of sort of the latest research within the, the space. And I was really impressed with, solid and how many different. Fields are actually working with happiness and wellbeing and quality of life now. And then it also gave a sort of a ranking of, of happiness levels around the world like it does every year now. Denmark was in first place in that report, uh, in the first one. And I just thought, isn't it interesting? Because you always see Denmark and the other Nordic countries do quite well in these livability, quality of life, happiness, wellbeing, rankings. Uh, there should be somebody in Denmark trying to explore why that is. And then I thought maybe I should actually try and explore that. also because as you allude to, it's, it's becoming a new metric of progress. So instead of just considering, are we getting richer, politicians and statisticians are, are looking at, are we, are we in fact getting happier also? and you have several countries not only collecting data. quite comprehensively, I think in, in Europe it's, it's the UK that have gone the furthest in, in that regard. So every year the Office of National Statistics in the UK ask four happiness questions to see where in the UK are people more or less happy, but you also have countries that are using happiness as the sort of. One of the main political goals of the country, of course, famously Bhutan have navigated, through gross national happiness since the beginning of the seventies. So every political decision is based on is this going to improve quality of life for people? But even, you had a country like, the United Arab Emirates, one of the 10 richest countries in the world. they had their first minister of state for happiness and wellbeing. I think she was appointed in 2015. Uh, and, and her job was to get the UAE to the top five in the World Happiness Report. so I think it's interesting, you know, rich countries are, are also looking at wellbeing, as, as a new sort of.

Paul Sephton:

It seeing the sort of focus that it's had from that perspective where, heads of state and governments are investing so heavily in it, I think. In some instances, and maybe more so in work, happiness is seen as a nice to have, but not a need to have. But clearly the investment and the focus shows that there's much more than just, uh, material happiness or wellbeing. in terms of the positive outcomes that you can get from having a society or a workforce or a family or whatever sort of, nucleus you're looking at being happy. What are some of the less considered. outcomes of happiness that people don't necessarily link directly to sort of the nice to have of happiness, but actually, that positively floats the rest of, the metrics that might sometimes get more focus.

Meik Wiking:

I think there are actually several things. first of all, if, if people are interested in sort of talent recruitment and retention, they should be mindful of, uh. That it's becoming a new metric when people are looking for jobs. So indeed.com, it's the biggest job site in the US They have collected, for years now and publishes them, answers around happiness. I think they have four, questions around happiness or wellbeing, asking current and former employees of different companies. So if I want to work as a cabin crew for an airline, I can go in and say, okay. Ryanair, their 3000 former employees, uh, have rated Ryanair with a 3.5 out of five on happiness. But Southwest Airlines have rated them 4.7 out of five. It doesn't mean that I'll experience a 4.7 out of five if I work for, for South by Southwest, but I think the odds are better. so, I think talent will go where, where happiness is not only promised but delivered. Secondly, several studies show the link between, productivity and, happiness among workers. So one of the most recent studies. conducted in the UK among 1800, salespeople for, uh, British Telecom in, uh, 11 different locations in the UK over six months, and found that happier employees, they looked at the effects dimensions. So how happy have people felt in the past week? measuring all sorts of metrics in terms of how many calls per hour, how many calls are converted to sales and so on, found that the happier people are, uh, 13% more, productive. and actually a recent study using the indeed.com data, uh, shows that the happier companies, the, the, the companies that, have the happier employees, they outperform, stock market wise, the rest of the S&P 500 index. so there's a good business case for productivity, for talent retention, and, uh, recruitment. and also if you care about stockholders.

Paul Sephton:

And if we look at the landscape over the last five years, we've had, pandemic inflation, geopolitical shocks, now the rise of ai. Have there been any sort of single changes that have most reshaped how the broad landscape of happiness is looking or, or how we define it?

Meik Wiking:

I mean the world has always been turbulent. And I mean, my, my colleague Aristotle, uh, worked with these questions 2000 years ago, found many of the same things that we find today. people don't like uncertainty. people don't like being lonely. People don't like being poor. Uh, that was the case 2000 years ago. That's the case today as well. the pandemic was stressful, created loneliness. It created uncertainty. and now. I mean so many, you know, global political events are also increasing the, the level of, uncertainty and, and anxiety. but I think, the world has always been uncertain. and, and what drives happen is I think it's the same today as it was 5, 10, 50 years ago and will be in the next 10, 50 years as well.

Paul Sephton:

And do you think with that sort of, with things like cost of living worries or or burnout increases, that there's sort of some type of permanent stress baseline shift that we're witnessing or that it is actually just different stresses, but at the same level that we've had for centuries?

Meik Wiking:

I think the mechanisms are the same. I think there are some. fundamental challenges we have as humans when it comes to happiness. because unfortunately I don't think we are wired to be happy. I think we are wired to be ambitious. we are the only species that will look at Mars and think, how do we get people up there? and that's exciting as, as a species to, to constantly raise the bar or sort of push the boundaries for what we can achieve. Um. It doesn't necessarily provide a good foundation for happiness because in happiness research we, we often talk about something called the hedonic treadmill, which means that we as humans constantly raise the bar for what we feel we need in order to be happy. so, you know, people are, are happy when they get a, a pay raise and then, 3, 4, 6 months afterwards, certainly 12 months afterwards, you know, we would like another 10%. additionally, for example, when it comes to income, we can see that people not only care about their absolute income, they care about their relative income. So how much money do I make compared to my peers, to my reference group? I think it's an American saying that a happy man is a man that makes $100 more than his wife's sister's husband. And we can to some extent see that, uh, in the data. so if you ask people, would you rather make, 50,000 US in a country where everybody else makes 25,000, or would you rather make a hundred thousand dollars where everybody else makes 200,000? Uh, roughly 50% of people will go for option one, because it's also about the position in the socioeconomic hierarchy. So we are becoming richer. But you know, if everybody is becoming richer, then I'm still in the same place in the economic hierarchy. And then, yes, I can buy more stuff, but maybe we have reached at least, uh, in a lot of countries, maybe we have reached Pique stuff for happiness. Uh, there's no more one thing I can buy that's going to bring me additional.

Paul Sephton:

And, and this is probably a reason that the Nordics are so frequently spotlighted and championing. Happiness indexes as the top leaders. Usually, You've written extensively about this, but what are some of the lessons of living Danish or living like a Scandinavian. Because some people have said it's not about being happier, it's about being more content with what you have. And so it's sort of about the framing of it and like you just gave with that example of would you rather have $50,000 when everybody else has 25 or a hundred when everybody else has 200? It is really about that anchoring bias and how you frame it, but within the Nordic perspective and your extensive studies on what it is that is driving this type of success What are some of the core findings that you would almost advise every other head of stake to say these are the ways you can move more towards happier workforces, happier societies.

Meik Wiking:

We look at happier societies, I think the, the Nordic model, what explains why all the five Nordic countries then, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, do well in the happiness rankings is that the Nordic model is fairly good at reducing sources of unhappiness. So, progressive taxation, channeling money from the richest to the, to the poorest, that that is going to raise the bottom. And These indexes are based on averages. So it, it brings up the bottom. And, and that's why these countries often come out, on top. but there is also good governance, low corruption, a high level of, of trust and trustworthiness. So, trust is also a, a field that have been researched quite well, and linked, with wellbeing in different countries. So one study took 17,000 wallets containing cash and ID papers, and dropped them on streets in museums, in kindergartens. And then they saw how many of these wallets are returned to the owner, with the cash still in them. and in Helsinki, Finland, you know, nine out of 10 wallets are returned with the cash, still in them. So, so there's also. Level of kindness or ence, um, trustworthiness that, that, that comes into play. and of course some of these things are, are or takes a long time to build and can be easily destroyed. but it, it's a, it's a complex, I think, ecosystem. and then you can go into the city design as well, or the architecture of happiness. I think what makes Copenhagen a, a city with a high quality of life is, that it to some extent removes the price tag there is on happiness that you can enjoy a relatively high quality of life, whether you are rich or poor, you know, millionaires and, people who are unemployed, uh, they get around the city the same way, because it's, it's fast and easy and, and fun to, uh, to ride your bicycle. so it's, it's a complex system. but I think that's also what makes it fun to, to research.

Paul Sephton:

And now if we shift sort of the lens onto work specifically, it's, it's a necessity for billions of people around the world if we're talking about zooming in on knowledge work as people who might be going into any type of office setting. That's still in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. And there is this really strong link that we've seen between work happiness and that's spilling over into life happiness. So can you shed any light for us on why work is such a dominant happiness engine, in the 21st century?

Meik Wiking:

If you look at employment. there is no question that people who are employed are more satisfied with life. they enjoyed yesterday more, uh, and they have a stronger sense of purpose or meaning in life. So all the dimensions we talked about in the beginning, they come out on top among people who are employed. But if you look at people who are employed and you ask them at random moments throughout the week, how happy do you feel right now? They typically report the lowest levels when they are working, which is unfortunate, but I think, I mean, we can also see that, work can and should be a source of happiness if you design it right, because, what does work provide. You ask, uh, what, what actually comes to mind is, a post-it. I saw, so here in, in Copenhagen, we, we created a, a happiness museum. And my favorite room in the museum is where we have asked people to write down on post-its what happiness is to them. And there was somebody who wrote, happiness is a quality lawnmower and a big lawn mow. And I think it's because we like to see progress. We like to achieve things. And I think that's one of the things we get outta work. What we also get outta work is we form a lot of meaningful relationships. We work on exciting problems. Um, it provides structure to our day. It provides identity. so, you know, when you meet people, one of the first questions is, you know, what do you do? and we can also see when we follow people over time and ask them year after year, how satisfied are you with life? One of the biggest setbacks, is when people become unemployed. Yes, we lose our income, but we also lose our identity and, and some of the relationships we have in life. we can also see also in this study, people who enjoy work, people who are satisfied with work are also more satisfied with life in general. And it's because We don't shut down part of ourselves when we go or leave work. I'm Mike, whether I'm working or whether I'm, I'm off work. and if I had a great day at work, my evening will also be better, because, I achieved something that day. So they're linked. Uh, and we can also see, I think in, in this study that if you have a high level of wellbeing at work, uh, you are 4.5 times more likely to be satisfied with life. which is great. And, and it's, it's a real power to have, I think as an employer that you can not only influence people's, uh, job satisfaction, but actually their life satisfaction. That's, that's a powerful position to be in.

Paul Sephton:

From that angle, where does stress play into things? Cause it's quite a, I think stress is far more nuanced than the knee jerk reaction that we have to it being, entirely negative. But like you say, if you have that purpose and you care greatly and deeply for your job, then the highs are high, but the lows are also low. How do we try and reframe stress and know when it's something that is negative or needs to be controlled or contained and when it can actually be? A powerful driver of positive outcomes or a byproduct of great care and purpose that one might have in their job.

Meik Wiking:

That was, I think one of the more exciting things about the, the result of this study was. I think we write that in the report that that not all stress is created equal. a lot of people are experiencing stress or study is also finding that, but, but we can also see that the happier employees are not the ones that are not feeling stress at all. Actually. Of course, yes. A lot of stress is bad for happiness at work, but a little stress is actually good. so finding that sweet spot, is key. And of course that that's a real challenge. But I think we also know it from our personal lives. If we don't have anything to do or if what we do is not challenging enough, we become bored. there was a, psychologist called, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. who coined the term flow, which is a pleasant state to be in, where we get sort of instant feedback where we, lose our sense of self and a sense of time. it's something that athletes, experienced often. I also experienced when I, play tennis or when I spear fish, I'm sort of, in the zone in flow. which is actually a really pleasant state to be in because, you know, the voice in the back of my head questioning whether I do things good enough is silent. so I think having a challenge, something where I find it interesting and fun to try and solve, that works well for me. as we can see through this study, uh, evidently also for a lot of other people, a little stress. seems to be be good, for people's wellbeing at work.

Paul Sephton:

And now if we kind of shift squarely to the study and the the changes that we're seeing, maybe anecdotally, maybe also from the dataset around. AI's impact, on the workforce. You could see a scenario in which right now there's a decent amount of discovery and excitement and intrigue. There's, AI assistance to humans, but it could be a situation wherein five or 10 years time we're managing teams of agents rather than teams of people. And there is a lot of oversight and we almost have this, job shock. or identity crisis. But on the other side, it could end up being a fantastic tool of augmentation, one in which we think will remove the mundane, drive higher purpose in jobs, and ultimately lead to a much happier workforce. What are some of the early signals that, you've gotten from these findings? Tell you about where you think we might be going.

Meik Wiking:

We find that AI adoption is, is still in its early days, and as we also write in the report there, there's mixed emotions. you know, one of the questions was to have people, you write down what words come to mind when we talk about AI and, and work in the future. and I think the results could be the same results as if we had asked people What comes to mind if you see. A really fast rollercoaster because it's, it's exciting and it's anxious and it's curious. so at a high level, we could see, people who are frequent, so daily users of AI are among the happier workers. At the same time, they were also the ones that were more concerned about becoming unemployed In the future, my hope is that AI will become a tool where I can sort of outsource to AI the boring part of my work and keep what excites me. also use, uh, other tools. I use autocorrect, right? Or auto spelling. I'm a writer. I write books. You know, finding my spelling mistakes is not what excites me. It's creating sentences that illustrates ideas and, and stories, and, and bringing those to life. That's what excites me, my hope is also that, that AI will be, that in the future, a companion and an assistant and I think that's also the hope that is shared among the 3,700, knowledge workers we surveyed in this study.

Paul Sephton:

And when it comes down to it, there seems to be. A decent amount of AI optimism and like you say, this, uh, really positive signal that those who are using AI more, seem to be more fulfilled broadly speaking with their work. Some of the concerns that came up were really around how all this transformation and change management is communicated more than the necessary outcomes, or that's about where we're going, but how much we are confident in. The way that the journey is being communicated. What are sort of your takeaways on advice to leadership for navigating this?

Meik Wiking:

You are right that there is optimism among the workers. I think it was 45% of the people we surveyed expected AI to make work more enjoyable and 10 to 15% that would make work less enjoyable. what they also articulated was that management should communicate and ensure. Transparency and not be so afraid of not delivering perfection. Nobody knows where this is going to go, and I, I think that's fine to admit , remaining silent I think is, is the wrong strategy addressing that. We don't have a perfect plan right now. but here are thoughts around the field, and, and having a dialogue with, the employees around this. That would be my advice.

Paul Sephton:

If you were to combine, like you say, the last 12 years worth of happiness research with this increasing. Integration of technology into our lives, whether that's in our personal lives with social media, with keeping up with friends and family, with digesting news. Uh, we're so, in touch with, technology every day. And it seems set to only continue with the rise of ai, but against a backdrop of, 12 years of happiness research and the constant flood of tips like avoid screens for two hours before bed and make sure that you get X, Y, or Z wellbeing boosters. What would you say in your experience, cuts through the noise as sort of a daily trend or a weekly trend towards happiness?

Meik Wiking:

In Denmark, we often talk about something called the A, B, C for mental health. it's actually an Australian university that, coined it. And A, B, C stands for act, belong commit and sort of roughly translate into doing something active, doing something together with other people where you belong and doing something meaningful, whatever that means to you, whether it's. religion or growing a vegetable garden and ideally something where you achieve all things at once. So during the pandemic, for example, we would go to a forest, my friends and I, we could spread out, and look for edible mushrooms. So we're outside, we're active, we're being together, we're looking for food. those would be one of the activities that, tick all three, categories.

Paul Sephton:

If you were giving advice to your younger self or someone who was on the cusp of, exploring. University, figuring out what they honor to do in life. There's been a lot of talk around, find something that makes you happy and you'll never work a day in your life. on the flip side of that, there's, cost of living crises is people who sort of say that, it's impossible to find work that's happy. And ultimately, if you're working a job that has very low security or in which you, you really struggle to make ends meet, your core happiness. markers are going to be quite low because of the stress that comes with that. And so then some people take the avenue of, I'll just study a degree or, or pursue a career that I know I might not like or get fulfillment from, but it will ultimately provide the core securities I need to have a baseline of happiness. What advice would you give to someone on balancing those different, uh, sides of the coin?

Meik Wiking:

First, I get that tyranny of choice or choice anxiety that people experience when they have to pick whatever line of profession they want to go into. I had the same when I was 19, 20, doctor, lawyer. I mean, I was all over the place. one study looked at, uh, supermarket, and had a stand in the supermarket, where you could try six different kinds of jam and you got a $1 discount if you tried the jam. At other times in the same supermarket, the same stand, but now 24 different kinds of jam. And again, you get a $1 discount if you buy one of these jams that you try. And then they saw how many people actually use these coupons, how many people buy once they've tried six jams and 24 jams. So if you have 24 jams, 3% end up buying something. When you have six jams, 30% buy something. Because if there's 24 jams. I don't know what is the perfect jam for me. Is it the strawberry rhubarb or is it the gooseberry? I don't know. So I'd rather not make a choice. so there is that, uh, so actually fewer choices are sometimes good for people. and, and secondly, maybe we need to Be prepared that, where we find meaning and where we find a source of income, is not necessarily going to be coming from the same source in the future. we also have countries now experimenting with, uh, universal basic income. I know Finland have done some experiments in this, and I think it's really interesting to follow. the fire movement, uh, which is big in the us So for people who don't know the fire movement, it stands for, financial independence, retire early. so people who are aggressive savers live really frugally and invest, their income. Uh. To eventually retire when they're 30 and live off the dividends or, or income they have from their investments. What is interesting about that movement from a happiness point of view is that a lot of these people, even though they are financially independent, continue to work because after six months on a beach you are bored and you want to achieve stuff and you wanna do stuff. so. I'm not sure it's an advice. Maybe I'm just making the people picking their profession more confused. but here we're

Paul Sephton:

It's like two roads that ultimately you could argue lead to happiness. The one in which you, you choose the thing that feels like Higher purpose for your calling, but like you say, that's even harder now than ever because of this decision paralysis on any number of endless careers. It's not as linear and and defined as sort of the lawyer, the doctor or the accountant. and then on the other hand, the path to happiness that, uh, you achieve through not necessarily finding purpose and meaning in your work, but through finding financial security and setting yourself up to find that meaning and purpose elsewhere in your life. So I don't think there's necessarily a right on. But it's a good conversation , Uh, thank you so much for joining me today, Meik. It's been a really, uh, insightful conversation and I think a necessary one to have that's often overlooked within a workplace setting.

Meik Wiking:

Thanks Paul.

Paul Sephton:

And that wraps up this episode of Great ExpectAItions. For more insights on how AI is shaping the future of work, or to catch up on past episodes and our latest reports, head over to jabra.com. I'm Paul. Thanks for tuning in.