Sign up to the The International Week of Happiness at Work manifesto

At the National Happiness Awards we love a good stat so when we saw this bit of number-crunching from The Association of Accounting Technician’s (AAT) we just had to share.

Those crazy cats at AAT have worked out that British employees work for 84,365 hours over a lifetime. That equates to around 10,545 days. Which is a long time to be miserable if you’re are unhappy at work.

Here at Laughology HQ (or NTA??) we’ve always known how important it is to create work environments where people can be happy, well and supported. We even run a workplace engagement and happiness programme. And when we heard about International Week of Happiness at Work, we signed up immediately.

The initiative was created by Maartje Wolff and Fennande van der Meulen and launched last year 2018, together with Martin Leroy from Argentina. It gives workplaces the chance to commit to creating happy environments for employees and promotes the benefits.

The International Week of Happiness at Work has a manifesto workplaces and individuals can sign up to.

Here are some of the key points:

• Happy employees are more involved, more productive, more cooperative, more creative and more innovative. They are less likely to call in sick and there is a decreased chance they will experience a burnout.
• Happy people are healthier, more vital, more cheerful, more social and more successful. They are better parents, better friends, and better community members.
• Happiness at work is about meaningful work, healthy relationships, development and having fun. And about stopping unnecessary rules, powerplay, complicated processes and procedures, absenteeism, unmotivated colleagues and terrible managers.
• Let’s create a workplace to stimulate fun, appreciation, positive feedback, awesome challenges, trust, meaningful results and own responsibilities. Let us, as employees, employers entrepreneurs, organizations and especially as human beings work together to make happiness at work the norm and not the exception.
• If we all take a step, we can make a big change.

You can also let others know you have signed up to the manifesto by sending them a postcard, which you can download by clicking this link.

In celebration of International Week of Happiness at Work we are sharing free resources on what you can do to help make your workplace happier. Click to Download our happiness drivers here. You can also download for our free simple guide on how to bring the happiness drivers to life in your workplace, or visit the download section of the workplace engagement page There are lots of ideas we know work, some are simple and easy to put into practice. Some you might do already. If you are already building a happy workplace you should enter the National Happiness Awards so we can recognise the fab things you do. Or if someone at your workplace or schools is already great at doing this stuff nominate them for an award today and show them you care.