Rediscovering the meaning of work

Work remains a means to an end for many. Yet, it is also where we spend a significant amount of time. Creating a place where we want to work is therefore worthy of all our attention. Ruth Holmes explores the personal, productivity and economic benefits of happier workplaces.

Ruth Holmes

13 February 2025

This article is taken from the Leadership Supplement from

Relocate Think Global People

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Loneliness and feeling less connected with people at work – and in our communities more widely – are growing issues.

Happier workplaces are more productive. But what does happiness at work mean? How can we increase personal and team wellbeing as we negotiate constant change? The answers are important not only for individual, family and community health and wellbeing, but also for the health of businesses, organisations and national economies.The UK, in particular, is facing the perfect storm of a longstanding productivity problem. Alongside innovation, the government is relying heavily on businesses and organisations to produce more with less to deliver even the most modest economic growth. Economic growth is linked to happiness and wellbeing and is a well-researched area. But can increasing happiness increase economic growth?Yok-Yong Lee and Kim-Leng Loh, researchers at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, found economic growth of 1–3% can be achieved by increasing happiness. Also, this positive impact is about four times greater in the most developed economies than in developing economies. It confirms the intuitive, anecdotal and self-reported evidence that happiness at work makes for more productive employees and that good jobs make for healthier populations.

Bringing joy back to work

Bruce Daisley, best-selling author, honorary visiting professor at Bayes Business School and former VP EMEA of Twitter, has written a bestselling book on how to create more joy at work. At the CIPD conference, he reflected on how much work had changed since the beginning of the century and what this means for making happier, more productive workplaces.Workloads have increased, processes have become quicker and we are more disconnected from each other. This is in the context of trust in major public and private institutions falling to all-time lows. However, work is one of the “smallest big things” we can have an impact on. “I suspect what we find going forward is organisations being called on more to offer a sense of safety,” he said. Creating this when uncertainty, overwhelm and lack of community characterise today’s workplaces is the challenge companies like global drinks company Britvic is actively addressing.Elly Tomlins, chief people officer at the company, detailed how its people policies support people to thrive at work. It is cultivating positive employee experiences, a sense of connection, community and safety. Britvic’s ‘We Care’ philosophy is “wired into the core of our ESG strategy,” she explained to delegates. Covering people, planet and performance, the ‘Healthier People’ strand focuses on employees, communities and consumers.Wellbeing for employees is driven from the bottom up. “We can’t solve everyone’s problems, but we can offer an environment where we can help,” she explained. This means giving line managers and employees as much agency as possible to step in and solve challenges and offering a range of affordable flexible benefits.Britvic has since seen a 7% increase in positive responses to the question “Britvic cares about my wellbeing” in its staff surveys. Tomlins believes there are three factors behind this. The first is the targeted help that has come out of “profound conversations” in employee groups. This includes the partnership with Night Club – a national charity helping organisations combat the £50bn lost to sleep deprivation – to help people working nightshifts cope with non-standard shift patterns.The second is the link to the ESG strategy. This gives people “spaces to feel good”, connect wellbeing to the environment and make work meaningful. The third aspect is giving people as much agency over their work as possible, including making suggestions and asking for help. Together, this approach helps people to feel more in control of their lives, which is important as work becomes more transactional.At energy company OVO too, there is recognition that different people need different things at different times. “There is an adult-to-adult culture at OVO with belonging and self-led networks,” said Emma Illingworth, its head of people transformation.

Reconnecting with colleagues and cultures

Initiatives and programmes like these help people to connect and build social capital. Loneliness and feeling less connected with people at work – and in our communities more widely – are growing issues. They are problematic because isolation reduces protective factors for good mental health, opportunities to forge strong social bonds and people’s enjoyment of their work and life.Having a best friend at work is important because it is “the biggest predictor of engagement,” said Bruce Daisley. “It forces you to reflect on your experience; someone to laugh, moan and talk nonsense with.” The second biggest predictor of engagement is the relationship with your line manager, especially for people in remote locations. More specifically, whether someone has received direct feedback from their manager this week. “Most of our engagement comes from our manager,” explained Daisley. “It’s our relationship with our manager that characterises it.”This is where a coaching approach can make the difference to performance and engagement. “Quite often, people feel seen with a few well-directed coaching questions: what did you think of that meeting? What do you think went well? What would you change for next time? A framework of coaching can give you that perspective. Friends and coaching go to the heart of being seen. If we are to make workplaces more connected, then making sure we feel seen and that is felt [are important].”For Laura Fink, people and culture director at HR platform HiBob, new managers are trained and equipped to help people build ‘people first’ connections and empower them in their growth mindset. This includes listening circles and building time into schedules every quarter for people to reset and recharge on Bob Balance Days (full company shutdowns). This is led from the top by leaders. It also means people feel safe to say they are feeling overwhelmed, said Jane Hinchcliffe, head of people practices at Tesco Bank. “Agile organisations need to ensure they are not creating pressure and people can say ‘no’.”Connection building, creating team and company rituals and helping people feel seen can be achieved on a small scale with low to no budget, such as the daily fika (coffee break) in Sweden. Bruce Daisley also gave examples like the self-explanatory Pizza Tuesday (small room, everyone invited, proximity creates opportunities to chat), Crisp Thursday (table in the reception area with a revolving assortment of conversation-starting snacks) and standing ten-minute meetings where, if there’s no micro training or update on the agenda, then a rock, paper, scissors tournament takes place to get people talking.He also gave the example of an Australian college’s dining hall protocol. Everyone is told on their first day that dining tables in the hall at lunch are filled from right to left. “You take the seat next to someone and only start a new table when the one next to you is full,” explained Daisley. “By the end of the year, everyone has spoken to everyone in the organisation. It’s a simple rule but one that has improved cohesion. It’s turned something lonely into something collective. Sometimes having structured rules can seem counter-intuitive, but they can be in service of building something stronger.”

Making work manageable and meaningful

The shift to hybrid and remote working has positively impacted employee wellbeing and happiness. The CIPD’s latest ‘Good Work Index’ found that people hybrid employees are less likely to say work is just about the money and more likely to add more discretionary effort, suggesting work is more manageable.Another related area Bruce Daisley says can increase happiness at work and reduce overwhelm is reducing the number of meetings. “The amount of time spent in meetings has trebled in the last ten years. If we are to enhance and improve cultures, we need to think about that.” Being called back to the office two or three days a week only to participate in back-to-back Teams or Zoom calls all day erodes the energising and engagement effect of being able to work productively from home.However, being in the office in person is important, as the four-day week experiment showed, said Daisley. In companies that participated, work intensity increased, but team connection tended to go down. This means being obsessive about culture; the spaces between meetings that promote productivity, shared identity and experiences, and the behaviours that support them.Vijay Pereira, professor of international and strategic human capital management at NEOMA Business School, and his team researched 76 companies that both employed more than 1,000 employees and operated in more than 50 countries. They found three is the optimum number of meeting-free days per week. Companies that canvassed employees’ opinions and then adopted this strategy reduced employee stress by 57% and increased engagement by 41%. However, even with just one meeting-free day a week autonomy, communication, engagement and satisfaction in the workplace improved.A new global employee experience research project, WorkPossible, conducted by employee experience consultancy Fauna in partnership with CultureCon bears this out. Employees value ‘headspace’ and fewer meetings, more recognition and autonomy, agency and empowerment in delivering high performance.The survey of 5,411 employees across five continents showed 58% say they ‘don’t have enough time to do great work’. A quarter feel drained by having no time to get work done. Tying up what makes work enjoyable, 59% say a good work-life balance is core and 51% increased flexibility, work-life balance, and better overall wellbeing. For 61%, more empowerment, agency and ownership would lead to a better experience. The more empowered the person, the better their overall experience at work. The most empowered employees were twice as likely to say they had a good experience at work in comparison to the least empowered employees. Around a quarter of all comments given mentioned autonomy, flexibility to manage own time, and decision-making power. From a leadership perspective, teams need their leaders to recognise them as individuals, empower them and give them headspace. A strong link also emerged between high-quality employee experience and a high-performance culture. The 78% of people who describe their employee experiences as high-quality also describe their culture and organisation as high performing. “We know that people want to make an impact and do their best possible work, but the complexity of their employee experience, lack of clear expectations and feelings of overwhelm are getting in their way,” said Hattie Roche, Fauna’s chief strategist. “What’s striking is that none of the things people ask for in the study are unachievable. In fact, there are fundamental human desires that can be addressed through overall changes to the employee experience. There’s a proven link between high-quality employee experiences and business performance, so it makes commercial sense for organisations to address these concerns.”

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