The Hidden ROI of Workplace Wellbeing (an Interview with Jan-Emmanuel De Neve)

This episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast is brought to you by Mercer. The years we've heard the familiar refrain, our people are our greatest asset. But if that's true, why does workplace well-being still feel like a luxury rather than a strategic imperative? In today's world of work, where burnout is rising, employing engagement is wavering and the nature of jobs is evolving rapidly. Free well-being is an absolute business critical issue, and few people understand this better than my guests today. I'm your host David Green, and today on the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, I am joined by Jan Emanuel Denev, Professor of Economics and Director of the Well-being Research Centre at the University of Oxford. Jan is also the co-editor of the World Happiness Report, and co-author of the recently published book Why Workplace Well-Being Matters. Moving on data from over 25 million workers through a landmark partnership with Indeed, Jan shares what the evidence tells us about how people truly feel at work and why that matters. We look at the tangible impact on business outcomes, everything from productivity and innovation to recruitment, retention and financial performance. And we also examine the role of leadership, organisational culture and technology, especially AI, in shaping the modern workplace. This really is an eye-opening conversation packed with research and a compelling case for why investing in how people feel at work isn't just the right thing to do. It's a strategic necessity. So without further ado, let's get the conversation started with a brief introduction from Jan. Jan, welcome to the show for those meeting you for the first time. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your research and your work life passion? Thank you, Dave, for having me on your podcast. And so yes, as you can introduce me, Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science, that gives you a sense that it's not macroeconomics or trade, but more towards the behavioural science. And I'm at the University of Oxford and more particularly at the study business school. And that will give you a hint at the fact that we're always looking at behavioural economics in the context of business. And then at Oxford, I set up the Wellbeing Research Centre, as you know, which is now a group of about 20, and frankly stellar young, old, and in between scholars, postdocs working on the empirical science of wellbeing, from a variety of angles, including of course, workplace wellbeing, which I personally lead that work stream, but also childhood lesson wellbeing, and much more. And I think one thing that might come up in the conversation also is that our Wellbeing Research Centre is now the production hub for the Olaquan World Happiness Report, which comes out once a year, has been in publications since 2012, and for the past two years, we run the show and fundraise and produce it for the rest of the world to see the rankings of country populations. And so that gives you a bit of a sense, a brief overview of my roles and the kinds of things I'm involved with. And then finally, I should mention, I'm also the co-founder of Acharity, which is called the World Wellbeing Movement, and that is together with Lord Layard, and so ably led by Sarah Cunningham, has pulled together about 15 or so organizations, foundations, and especially exemplary corporates, the likes of Unileber and Deed H.S.P.C., to put some resources together to help put wellbeing metrics at the heart of both business and public policy. And so we're doing a lot of work, generally, then, as you can tell, and the empirical wellbeing space. Well, it's great. I mean, and Wellbeing is a topic that the much of our audience is very interested in mostly HR professionals, HR leaders, and I think what we're going to be talking about in this episode is actually the connection between Wellbeing and firm financial performance, but also the societal impact of firms as well. So really looking forward to diving into it. Obviously, we're going to be talking about some of the findings no doubt from the World Happiness Report that you mentioned. You've also co-authored a book with your colleague George Ward, I think, who is an INSEAD, Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters, The Science Behind Employee, Happiness and Organizational Performance. And for those watching on the video, you can see it behind Jan, and you can see it there as well, next to my book as well, on the shelf there. I just want to also congratulate you on the World Happiness Report. I wonder how do the insights from the World Happiness Report connect to what you're seeing in the workplace through your research, and why do you think now is such a critical time to focus on Wellbeing at work? It's a good question, and it's interesting, and for me it's been interesting as well over the past, we've got a decade and a half now that I've been working on Wellbeing Science, where I've worked both on sort of population Wellbeing, what makes individuals and populations happier, what explains differences, which is sort of the mission of the World Happiness Report. In that case, we're essentially trying to explain differences in life satisfaction. As we move into the workplace, when I put on the Business School Professor Hat and the book that you've currently alluded to, Wellbeing Matters, that's very much then looking into job satisfaction, so the domain of work. But when we explain differences in job satisfaction, or between job satisfaction aggregated across companies, or whether we're trying to explain license satisfaction aggregated population level, it's a good question you're asking because we do find some parallels there. And I think the main one is, is essentially part of the Beyond GDP movement. For example, in the context of population Wellbeing, most people would think of GDP as a proxy full welfare/Wellbeing of a population. What we find is that differences in GDP explain a bit, but by a long mile, not as much as people expect that they explain differences in population Wellbeing. What does explain differences would then be health, healthy life expectancy, and especially in this is the link, I think, with workplace is social support, sense of belonging, social connections, trust, the social elements, the social capital in a society or in a community. And I think what's clear in the book as well, when we look at sort of the drivers and the relative importance of these drivers, it's the same thing that gets echoed in the workplace. When you ask people what is most important for a workplace Wellbeing, the satisfaction with your job, while people who could on top is sort of a fair compensation and flexibility. When you actually run the analysis to see what helps explain most differences between people's levels of job satisfaction, it turns out it's the sense of belonging, having friends at work, feeling like you're being cared about, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so again, the social capital in the work, from the workflow or the workspace, it turns out to be way more important than people think. And so thank you for putting me to this question, because it's something that between these two levels of analysis, we do find similarities in terms of what drives the creation in both lightest and jobs satisfaction, and it's typically the social capital, the social elements that come to the fore in those instances and have been typically overlooked both in business and policy. What are you interested in? Before we dig into the workplace Wellbeing, specifically for our listeners' interest and knowledge, which countries usually come out on the top of the World Happiness Report? I know it's usually the Nordic countries, I think, isn't it? Oh, true. It's finally again this year. They took over from Denmark a few years ago, to truth be told, it's quite tight up there at the very top. And so, and it's interesting to actually give you the number. So it's just to be clear, the World Happiness Report is not an index, it's literally we report back the average satisfaction of his life reported by a representative sample in all of those countries. And so it defines to the name of the people at the very top. The average response to the question on the scale from 0 to 10 has satisfied already with your life these days, average response is close to eight, like something 7.7, 7.8 on average. In the UK, it's closer to 6.9 or 7, as is the case in the United States, so a whole point lower really than this candy in the Nordic countries. By the way, and at the very bottom, it's a tight, they'll have Afghanistan continue to slip and the average response to the life satisfaction question on the zero to 10 scale in Afghanistan is 1.5. So imagine going into an organization or community, asking a representative sample on scale from 0 to 10 has satisfied are you with your life. And the average response is 1.5. So if anybody responds to 4.5, you already need a whole bunch of zeros, just bring it back count to 1.5. So it gives you a sense that people in these places know very well they're leading poor lives, poor, not just materially speaking, but psychologically speaking. So that gives you a bit of a sense of the differences. So we pick up huge differences in population well-being as measured to the self-reported measures of happy people feel that quality of your life is going. And that's our starting point. So I started this response to this question by noting that we're not an index, we don't produce, even though we're a bunch of high end academics from different institutions, we don't pretend to know how happy you are, David. So there may be lots of course well-being explained by multiple dimensions and everybody has factors explaining it from income to social support, to healthy life expectancy, to all kinds of things that matter in explaining differences between people. But ultimately you have to ask people, well, are you satisfied with your life? Are you happy? And that's what we start with. And then we use these other more objective indicators to try and explain why they feel the way they do. And that's sort of the, while it seems obvious what I just said, it's actually quite a step up or step forward, I think, because most efforts, and by way, this is relevant to business and HR leaders as well, because most HR leaders, just like most indices to try and move is beyond GDP, they sort of mix and match inputs and outputs into like a dashboard type approach with seven dimensions, well dimensions, or 17 dimensions, like SDGs, or many more KPIs, but there's sort of no conceptual structure or hierarchy, but then also if you're a business leader or an HR leader, ultimately you have to make decisions about where to spend your money, which is typically a limited budget, nobody, money doesn't fall from the tree. And so you have to, so say if it's CEO, gives you David, say, C-Hero, a million dollars extra this year to spend on improving workplace well-being, where do you spend it on? And in a classic sort of dashboard approach with, say, an indicators, there's no way, unless there's a conceptual hierarchy with an outcome, a KPI, and then drivers, you cannot have, you, you would end up, technically, probably splitting your million dollars and a hundred thousand each one of your kind indicators, where the reality is in your organization, some things will matter more than others, it could be their pay or flexibility or belonging or trust, or manage your support or learning, and so that will change from individual between populations between organizations, and so you need that conceptual hierarchy to have a criterion, and I think in the language of a philosophy, but in the language of econometrics, you need something on the left hand side of the equation, the Y, the dependent variable, that needs to be explained by the variables in the right hand side of the equation, X1, X2, X3, X4, in order to be able to derive a weight, a coefficient, the relative importance of these drivers, and I think that's one of the things, so in the book, we go on and on and on and on, about making the case, to sort of take the next step and make a conceptual split between an outcome, like job satisfaction, and a driver such as compensation, trust, learning, flexibility, the kind of actionable drivers that you should be working on, but that each feed into an overarching notion of how people feel at work, and that's what we're trying to drive, but if you don't make that split, then us doesn't come together. 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What does this scale of data talk you about how people truly feel at work and what patterns or surprises emerge? Thank you, David, for raising it. It's just been an extraordinary partnership with, indeed, starting in late 2019, and they always say they've got millions and millions and millions of people going to the website each month. And so, a handful of those are getting nudged into responding to questions. And to be precise, the outcome indicators would be job satisfaction, be phrased it, but also, are you happy at work? Are you stressed at work? You find purpose and meaning in the work you're doing. And these be considered so of outcome questions. And then they also get answers, or we get answers and they get asked questions around who whole host the drivers, like the ones we mentioned flexibility, pay, belonging, learning, manager of support, you name it. And we're nearly 30 million, it's just an extraordinary high frequency source of data. The main insights are first and foremost, and this is good news for the data science. This is that there's a lot of variation. And so, these questions are being asked on a one to five scale, and what we're finding out there is that there's organizations where the average work well-being score, which is the average of the four outcome indicators, is over four out of five. And then there's organizations where it's not even two out of five. And then somewhat, surprisingly, you find these distinctions, even within industries. And so, you know, say a well-known ham, and even so, my favorite example of this is the hamburger industry, because it's such a very, it's an industry where people kind of do the same thing, flipping burgers, selling them, serving, cleaning, et cetera. And yet, you'll find a very well-known hamburger chain doing two points lower on skill from one to five than in and out on the west coast of the U.S., which is sort of at the top of this. And so, this raises the all-important question, and okay, so if we're finding huge differences, even within industry, what explains these differences? And it goes back to the point we just raised earlier, which is you kind of need, then these driver structures to help you explain, what is the relative importance of pay, of belonging, of flexibility policies, of trust, of learning and mensurial support on the job, and explaining why it and out was so much better than some of the big names in the industry, for example. We find these differences across every industry. The other big finding is, actually, maybe stop finding what I just mentioned is also, there's so much data here, for the large companies, the Wal-Mart, the McDonald's of this world. We've got tens of thousands of responses over time coming in every day. And it allows us to also slice and dice by region, or even by warehouse, or plant. And what we're finding, I think at this point, we probably have better view on the well-being of workers at Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart does itself. And so, what's extraordinary here is that you find big differences, even within an organization. The other big point, David, and this is a bit sad, is now obviously these are the crowdsource data through Indeed. There's some selection bias, and we can talk about that if you want. But even controlling for some of that, we find that only a quarter of respondents, or just shy of a quarter to be precise, is actually reporting four or five out of five on average. So that means that three quarters of the workforce are sitting in their one, two, three out of five. And so that gives you sense now, which is an arbitrary cutoff, like people were spilling for five, but businesses like to have sort of like these, these percentiles. So it does give you sense, and it aligns with some of the other research we're seeing by our friends at Gallup, engagement figures that are all also pretty appalling, typically about 18 or 20 or 22 percent of people are actively engaged, and a whole chunk is actively disengaged. And so this mayors echoes this, but I think on a grander scale. And so I think that's the call for, like the alarm bells should be sounding, and especially in light of what we're going to be talking about later, we find these links between how people feel at work and their productivity, the retention of this talent, and obviously also a good workplace becomes a more attractive employer in the first place, which also has its dance, tree, and consequences on B&L. And so I think the fact that there's so much room for improvement on workplace well-being, clearly, the fact that it is possible to raise workplace well-being and let nobody tell you it's not possible, I do think that is, these are some of the key meta insights coming back from this massive, massive world's largest study of workplace well-being, thanks to the partnership with indeed. And that's probably a good starting point, I think, for more insights in our discussion now. So when it comes to impact, you know, you've spent over a decade looking at this, what does your research show you about how workplace well-being links to business outcomes like productivity, recruitment, retention, even financial performance? Well, you've got to make an important distinction there. So and we've only come at this. So in our research, we've looked at these different elements over time, and only after a while it became clear to us how this is all coming together. And so you should know that the improving workplace well-being leads to different behaviors of your workers. And the most immediate one, the one that took us the longest to prove causally, is productivity. So David, if you feel better this week, generally speaking, you will be performing better this week in your organization. And that's sort of a first major pathway to performance. And we can talk about how we got there. We worked with British Telecom, it took us 10 years, we leveraged different weather around the call centers where these call center pleas were coming in as a natural experiment to sort of manipulate their moods one week to another, combine that with the architecture of these call centers and the exposure to light to try and have a natural manipulation of their mood from one week to another to then see how that sort of cascades onto their performance. What we're finding there is, and this is the headline results from the productivity piece, is there's about, as really a lower bound estimate, but it's sort of a 12% increase and heart week be sales from a steady deviation change in their well-being, how they felt for one week to another. That's lower bound. There we have for more sort of, for tasks that require more social emotional intelligence, the impact was greater. So if, when the tasks that are more complex in nature, like at this rental customer calling in, and you have to try to retain your business, potentially even upsell them, that's when how you felt that week mattered a lot more than just taking calls that were just order-taking, where there was no social emotional intelligence. So maybe an argument or something for later in discussion is that, in the future of work, what's going to be left as humans to do is the kind of work that requires social and emotional intelligence, elements of creativity, and that's precisely where how you feel today or this week matters more, obviously than in the events of when it's just orders or aching or something more mechanical, which machines will end up doing anyway. So that's pathway to performance one is like that productivity link. The second pathway is essentially retention, very intuitive, but David, if you're feeling good at the company or better, you're more likely to stay. Companies with high work less well-being, so where the average is around 4 out of 5, with reference to earlier, we find that those companies have a third less annual voluntary turnover. So that's talent that's leaving that you didn't want to leave. And that's the rate of 30% more than companies with high turners. So the companies with a four out of five on average are 30% less annual voluntary turnover than companies with low work less well-being. That's the second pathway. And then the third pathway is talent recruitment, attraction. And this is really exciting. We ordered, I mean, our friends at Indeed, when the work of links for was being rolled out, there was an A/B test, so it was staggered rollout, which allowed us, and George had all the work on this, but an extraordinary study, which became as MIT, PhD thesis. And again, sit tight, but we were able to randomize, I think 23 million job seekers, 23 million job seekers were randomizing to either seeing work well-being scores for an organization they were thinking about applying to or not seeing it and just seeing the usual job description, the company name, and the salary attached to it. Low and behold, when people see more information about the non-pacuniary, the non-monetary elements that they're working there from the horse's map, so if they're sort of, oh, this company's actually the top half or top quarter, high workless well-being, job seekers start responding to this. So their behaviors are changing, and it's not massive massive, but they were less inclined to apply to low workless well-being in companies. So the treatment group, the people who saw the usual job ad, job description, pay, but also the work on being scored. And if it was low, they were less likely to apply, issue as top or like top quintile, then or top quarter, they would be more likely to apply. And so this is the third pathway to performance, but these are just the benefits of well-being, they don't bring into the picture of the cost side. And so the only way to try and get both the benefits of improving workless well-being, as well as the cost, well, there's two ways. One is to literally look at intervention by intervention and see like, okay, what will it cost me to improve workless well-being through intervention X or Y, whether it's coaching or this training or mindfulness apps or wholesale change in composition packages or benefits. But then you'll get the ROI on a specific intervention to improve workless well-being. So what we were after is like, wait a second, we may not have the specific costs of an intervention and the attached well-being and productivity gains, but we could do is look holistically at an organization's P&L and see, look at differences between the well-being of some company versus another company and see whether they do better financially in terms of profitability. While we may not understand what these companies did to improve workless well-being, but they must have done something to have an average score of 80 rather than say 70. And so whatever they did to effectively raise workless well-being, it must have cost them something or nothing, but they did things that have a positive impact on their well-being does it pay off? Yeah. Is it performance driving well-perceived well-being or is it the other way around sort of thing? Yeah, yeah. Precisely. And so the beauty is, I think, on the individual pathways to performance, the productivity retention. We now have causal evidence. We've been able to disentangle the dynamic directions, learning from performance onto well-being and well-being to performance. So there we have causal evidence, there's like nobody can attack us on that front. And only on the business case, the larger sort of performance, it's harder to manipulate. You constantly like to experiment and put some companies into well-being intervention and others not generally and see what happens. So that's not quite possible. So the best we can do is move to a sort of longitudinal evidence where we see is historical levels of workless well-being. Say, the well-being of companies in state 2021 or 2022 is that predictive financial app performance in 23, 24, 25. And so that's the kind of stuff that we set out to do and that's what we're finding. So we're using, for example, the work well-being scores of the big companies that are listed in 2021, 22, and you sort of see that that continues to predict financial performance of the profitability coming years out. And that's one study. And in line with that, the final study, and sorry, I'm all a bit of a… no, no, no, no, those things, these good stuff. And I know that the P-Panelistics people listening will be loving it, so. Oh, that's excellent. Thank you, David. But I'll finish on this, which is a study I got so much attention and placed to this. The longitudinal aspect is the stock market study. So now that we've got comparable data for all the big listed companies in the US, it begged the question, obviously for us, but three years ago, wait a second. If we believe in this business case, why not invest on this? Let's see that also pays off in future stock market performance. And so on January 1st, 2021, we invest in a thousand bucks and the top 100 based off the 2020 data, historical data. And then go to bed for a whole year, wake up on January 1st, 2022, 2022, as you see how we did. And, and then we do reject the portfolio a little bit and just about typically, just about so out of the top 100, just typically about 20 companies that sort of drop out of top 100 because of the new data. And then we, that gets, they get replenished and there's a bit of new blood coming into the top 100. So there's a bit of change, but not, but not fully, of course. Some companies keep doing very well for their people and people tell us so. And so what we're finding is both in the bear market, in the bull market and the volatility, overall right now are portfolio of just investing on best places to work from the horse's mouth through this crowdsource survey and across all companies. We're at, I think, $1,600, whereas the S&P is of $1,500 and NASDAQ is to a 1,400 something. So there's meaningful, meaningful predictive power and they'll just, but outperforming because obviously, good companies will have been already highly valued, but still, there's something extra in there that is not fully, the work while being, so pays dividends over time that are not fully captured nor anticipated by the stock market. And that's exciting. I want to take a short break from this episode to introduce the Insight 2-2-2 People Analytics program, designed for senior leaders to connect, grow and lead in the evolving world of P-Panelistics. The program brings together top HR professionals with extensive experience from global companies, offering a unique platform to expand your influence, gain invaluable industry insights and tackle real-world business challenges. As a member, you'll gain access to over 40 in-person and virtual events a year, advisory sessions with seasoned practitioners, as well as insights, ideas and learning to stay up-to-date with best practices and new thinking. Every connection may bring new possibilities to elevate your impact and drive meaningful change. To learn more, head over to Insight2-2-2.com/program and join our group of global leaders. Those two part questions, firstly, do you think well-being is still treated as an HR nice to have? And then maybe as part of that, why do so few CEOs invest more in employee happiness than well-being initiatives? This is your thought, Trillion. Oh, no. It's a very good question. One that we go on and on at length in the books is thank you for raising it. Yes. So, in a way, back to the very start of our conversation. Once you make that conceptual split between measuring how people feel at work, generally, through stage of satisfaction, and then look at what might drive it, then you quite quickly get into thinking more holistically around workplace well-being and not just of individualistic interventions, typically associated with HR wellness, perhaps packages such as mindfulness apps, like proposing yoga or health checks and these kind of things, which are very individual focused. But what you find when you do these driver analysis is that the relative importance of the more structural environmental social aspects actually weigh in more into how people feel at work and those drive their performance and productivity, or have you, as do these individualistic elements. And I think we're moving away, so our friends, Andrew Gibbons, who's a global head for well-being at HR PC, who's absolutely brilliant. He calls, he's called, he's coined his notion, okay, we're moving for well-being 1.0. And playing whack-a-mole with wellness interventions. So we want this, we want that, and he sort of throws stuff at people and see what sticks. So sort of well-being 2.0, which is more Evans-based, trying to actually get into the data, what actually drives well-being more structurally, and trying to put your money where it will have structural, where it will make real difference. And but that does mean this goes to your question. It means that the HR function is going to have to play more of a bridge-building role and because a lot of the more structural interventions that will really move the need of a well-being, will have to do with work culture, ways of working, bureaucratic elements, red tape, people get frustrated, they're not at their productive best because of XYZ, publics, pay, which is not necessarily within the domain of HR, but so CFO suite, culture and sense of belonging and it comes from right from the top of the Theo. And so there's a lot of stuff that actually helps explain how people feel at work that is outside a scope or the remit of your traditional HR function. And so I think you've got this notion of cheap HR officer who would become chief people officers. And so you see some companies that adopted that language. I think that's a good move. It's also indicative of the fact that they are then speaking in behalf of people. And then they need to work with the CFO, the CEO, Chief Operations Officer to talk about okay, ways of working, making it easier for people to do what they need to do and feel productive, bullying culture, belonging, wherever, pay. And so there is a move, I think. And I shouldn't pick on the wellness, it's more like beyond the individual. So at the moment, people think, oh, well-being is you, David, and I'm going to try and improve your well-being by throwing yoga and mindfulness apps at you. But they forego the fact that a big chunk and code, the co-responsibility of how you're feeling at work is the work environment. And that also explains how you're feeling. It's not just making you more resilient or happy, but dealing with, I mean, my, our colleagues Sarah coming and her runs the world well-being movement, she was, she was doing a little sketch on stage at the World Happiness Summit where she was saying, oh, we're going, so we're going to get a, where there will be yoga offered between two and three this afternoon. And at the same time, there's all these slacks and pings and emails coming in, where people she was overworked. And so the yoga was actually kind of productive because the header fell behind and worked later in the evening. And so some of these things, these ways of working, the stress they, the burnouts, are not going to be addressed by tagging along mindfulness apps or yoga. And these things are not bad, by all means do, but some of the core roots of why we're unhappy at work is, is come through the structure of work to begin with and the ways of working and the work itself. Another big area for HR and business is the future of work, you know, we can't talk about the future of work without talking about technology, especially AI. What role do you see technology in AI playing in shaping the quality of work and how can we ensure it's used to enhance rather than erode well being? Well, God, how much time do we have? No, God, no, but in some, first of all, very please, you just know how can we leverage these new technologies to improve the quality of work? That is already a massive step change. The fact that you raised the question the way you did is huge because most people will be generally, especially in the context of policy or economics, they'll be talking about, okay, essentially the supply of work, quality, what jobs, how many jobs will be left, who's going to be kicked out of the organization and sort of like, so an element of quantity of work and as we're being reminded, more often than not, there's with every industrial cycle, like with new major new technology coming in, what is it now, the fourth and fifth industrial revolution, there's always been a lot of transition and some jobs go and others get created. So, maybe this time is different through AI, I don't know. But a priori, I think we can probably best rely on the fact that yes, it'll be difficult, some jobs will go, transition, rescaling, and then hopefully better jobs will come into play. A priori, the automation, new technology, the AI bit, is taking out tasks and jobs that are associated with lower jobs that is faction. As was in previous, as was the case in previous industrial revolutions. So, initially we're optimistic because it means that there will be a period of transition and needs to be a lot of help for those that are needing to transition, but the new jobs ought to be better than the old jobs. There are things that do look different this time around. And AI and these algorithmic platforms becoming your manager to some extent is something that semi-wearing. I know to talk these days as we've got our co-pilots and our AI agents and will all become CEOs or managers of AI agents. And that seems exciting. That seems to fit with the positive case. But I'm also seeing signals that it's not just AI agents that assist us, but in many cases we're now being, it's not, it's the AI agents managing us instead. And so maybe not at every level of your organization, hopefully there'll still be CEOs in the C-suite folk, bossing AI agents around, but I do see a lot of instances, and the most obviously obvious case are the gig workers who've been, I think sort of the canary in the coal mine here, potentially, because if you're an Uber driver or a delivery career moving food around, you don't have a line manager. Your line manager is an algorithmic platform. You're not seeing other people. You have no colleagues. You have no boss. No, nothing. Algorithmic platform suggesting where you go, what to do, and what are you doing, good job, or not at it. And so that's a bell weather, we ought to be mindful of that. Now, if in the book we consider all of this, and we say it's hard to predict the future, but what we could do is look at the drivers of workplace well-being, and how is automation AI impacting each one of these drivers? And what you're finding is, in essence, some drivers seem to be positively impacted, for example, flexibility, autonomy, agency seem to be, agency perhaps flexibility, autonomy, the sort of more, there's more opportunities for job crafting, working from home as a benefit for the white collar folk typically, but thanks to technology, but then on the flip side, you've got sort of that sense of belonging, which as turned out to be so important to social elements, those, however, are being put under pressure, especially without the rest of the platforms becoming your manager, or your co-workers or Microsoft co-pilot or chat GPT. And so that becomes more problematic, from a human, from a human element, from a well-being, from a quality of work aspect. And then pay is also interesting, pay, obviously, is important to work with a well-being. And here we do know from economic research on these industrial revolutions is that it typically, there's gains from productivity, otherwise people wouldn't be doing these technological changes, but the gains from productivity tend to go to a subset of the workers in addition to shareholders and those companies that run these technological advancements. And so our fear is that on one of the drives, the workers are being paid as well, like through flexibility, positive, belonging, big question, pay is also questionable because some will benefit, but possibly a majority will not benefit from this, it will have to work harder for this name-pay or potentially be in competition with AI machines, which means that they're going to be having less leverage and bargaining power in driving positive change in their salaries. And so we're foreseeing, and I think all HR leaders listening to this, this is going to hit home because as you're introducing these productivity efficiency-enhanced thing tools, the C-suite is very excited about the potential of cost-cutting. If E-thanks to these productivity efficiency-enhancing tools can do more in the same amount of time, that means that teams can be reduced, so if you're a team-David now say 10 people strong, I'm willing to put my hand in the fire, and five years it'll be eight or six people strong, and you'll be asked to product it. From a political economy perspective, so now from HR to economics to politically economy, political economy is about how to distribute these gains to productivity, who's going to gain from this? And it's definitely going to be the opening eyes of this world, Microsoft's, the meta's, the Googles, the XAI's. I think the employers, the shareholders, are going to benefit massively because they'll be huge efficiency gains, productivity gains. I think the C-suite is going to benefit because they'll have to manage all of this hybrid workforce, and I think the very talented pilots who are really managing this and are good at working with AI are going to benefit, they'll see their salary increases. I think there's a big chunk of the workforce who's not necessarily going to benefit. And then the question is, will we be able to redistribute some of these gains for productivity back to the workforce who may not stand to benefit, or a big chunk of the workers who may not stand to benefit from these gains? And that is through taxation, or through labor unions pushing for decent wages and living wages for people who would not stand to benefit, or through universal basic income, or these kind of ways, and there's a bigger question. And then I'll finish on this, but if I'm fully confident that society will be able to fully compensate the losers in this question, and take from the winners enough to compensate the losers through taxation, UBI, et cetera. And so my ID here is, how about if we cannot compensate or redistribute the productivity gains in terms of money, can we redistribute a little bit in terms of time? And maybe we can realize the prediction of John Maynard Keynes from the early part of the 20th century, when he said, I think he said something along the lines of, and maybe I'm discosing him, something along the lines of, by the end of the century, we'll be working in 15 hour a week. I don't think we'll get there, but I think, yeah, maybe you're right, maybe that's the well-being angle of the future of work. Yeah, and we need to get to the question of the series. And then I'm going to ask you one last question about the book. So I'm going to ask you to look into your crystal ball, and it's probably a little bit of what we've been talking about, really. What's the single biggest shift in the future of work you foresee by 2030, and how do you think HR can lead it? I think 2030 the biggest thing for HR is to properly manage the rollout of these new technologies like AI agents, is like, don't just impose it the reason being, and this is sort of, is a nice distillation of what we've been talking about. Yes, it might be productivity enhancing, but if it takes out a sensible longing, it's going to hurt people's well-being, which is going to really reduce their productivity and raise mental health concerns. And so you may be, it may backfire if you push it through too hard, just on the sake of efficiency. So yes, CEOs and CFOs will want you to get this happening, ASAP, these AI enhancing tools and co-pilot use, but make sure it does, you roll it out in a way that is in partnership with people. So they feel good about this, because if they don't feel good about this, it's going to backfire in spectacular ways, and that will undude productivity against what you're hoping for. Well, yeah, I think we could talk about this all day, but although we are a list of those like long episodes, I think it's probably, we have to get to a limit. So one thing about the book, if people could have one big idea to take away from it, what would you want it to be? The meta-idee, of course, is you take care of people, deal to care of business. That's the meta-idee that comes through. And I know as well a lot of people say, but obviously the evidence now is irrefutable and is right to air. And the second idea would be, measure what you treasure, but measure properly, make that conceptual distinction between measuring how people feel and then what drives it. And they'll just mix the mesh things and then it becomes a pottery of things that becomes ineffective. Yeah, and thank you so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure, and I've learnt a lot from our conversation. All we part ways for the day, could you let listeners know how they can follow all the great work you're doing at the well-being research center, find out more about the book, follow you on social media? Oh, well, thank you. I've got a decent LinkedIn following, so look me up on there. The book is called Why Work Based Well-Being Matters. Published earlier this year with Harvard Business Press, doing well, and sort of really, really brings all of our research together in a accessible way. The Well-Being Research Center obviously has a newsletter where it is the seminars and much more. The Well-Being Movement has the – we didn't talk about this, but it's very important to know the Well-Being Movement has a what we call the Playbook for Well-Being Interventions, so all – if you're inspired about everything on the conversation with David just now and you want to know what actually works to effectively improve Workless Well-Being. Look no further than the Well-Being Movement's Playbook, where for every driver of Workless Well-Being we've listed the best Evans-based interventions and then check out the Well-Being Partnersport. Lots of resources for people to look at. Yeah, and thank you so much for being a guest on the Digital Tohachar Leaders Podcast. Thank you, David. If there's one takeaway from today's discussion, it's this. When people feel better at work, they perform better. It's as simple and as powerful as that. So a big thank you again to Jan for all the amazing work he is doing in helping to reshape the way leaders think about Well-Being. And as always, thank you for tuning in each week and listening to the show. If today's episode sparked ideas, questions or even a shift in perspective, don't forget to subscribe, rate and share the episode with a colleague or friend. It really helps us reach more forward-thinking leaders like you. To connect with us at Insight222, follow us on LinkedIn, check out our website at Insight222.com and don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter at MyHRFuture.com. That's all for now. Thank you for tuning in, and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Digital Tohachar Leaders Podcast. Until then, take care and stay well.