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Happiness scientist, professor, and podcast host Laurie Santos shares how she’d design a culture of well-being and connection.

The day I spoke with happiness expert Laurie Santos, PhD, she could hardly contain her excitement in sharing Jan-Emmanuel De Neve’s workplace happiness study. In partnership with Indeed, his team at Oxford surveyed 15 million people about everything from their stress levels at work to their overall life satisfaction.

Studies show that if somebody wants to turn their job into a calling, the best way to do so is by building in more of those values. So I’d start by surveying my team’s values and strengths. Then [I’d] give them the freedom to job craft.

“I start with this study because it reveals our utter misconceptions,” Santos tells me. “Companies are trying to create happier workplaces, but they’re doing it based on biases of what matters. When leaders were asked to predict the top drivers of happiness at work, they said things you’d expect, like compensation and flexibility. Those things matter, but they’re more in the middle than people expect. The main driver of happiness at work is a sense of belonging. It’s your answer to the questions: Do you feel like you matter here? Do you have a sense of community?”

Santos is known for debunking and helping us correct our misconceptions about happiness—a journey that began when her Yale class, Psychology and the Good Life, became the most popular in the university’s history. Her teachings have since spread across ages and geographies; 4 million people have taken her free Coursera class, the Science of Well-Being. She created a course for teens and, most recently, collaborated with Sesame Street on a children’s series for her podcast The Happiness Lab, which has been downloaded more than 90 million times.

Read the complete Fast Company article BY JENNA ABDOU: https://www.fastcompany.com/90956689/the-creator-of-yales-viral-happiness-class-has-a-solution-for-employee-satisfaction

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