The Happiness Index - Data. Insight. Stories

This week on the podcast, our host Matt Phelan sits down for a deep, insightful conversation with someone who has been a trusted partner since the early days of The Happiness Index. His guest is Kay Gunn MSc FCIPD , a veteran people director and the founder of her own leadership development consultancy - Kay Gunn Limited. Kay specialises in a critical yet chronically under-invested area of busines...

Matt Phelan catches up backstage at Google HQ in London with Andrea D Carter , a renowned neuroscience researcher and a core contributor to the Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026 . In this high-impact five-minute conversation, you will discover: 🧠 The personal spark. How navigating the real-life pain of raising neurodivergent teenagers drove Andrea to decode the neuroscience of workplace incl...

Matt Phelan welcomes back a good friend and headline sponsor of the Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026, Viktoria Otero del Val from Pluxee. In this lightning-fast snippet, Matt fires over one vital question: What is the most important data point for modern leadership? In under five minutes, discover: 🗺️ The multidimensional reality. Why looking at a person as the sum of all their coexisting re...

This week, we’re changing things up. Our host Matt Phelan is back in the chair, and he’s turning the microphone on Stefan Tornquist . After spending months hosting our Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026 series, Stefan is stepping onto the other side of the desk as a guest. Stefan is the lead author of the report and the managing director of Executive Summary Research. He’s spent over 30 years...

Natalie Semmes from Kind-Hive: What is radical kindness in leadership? Matt Phelan catches up backstage with Natalie Semmes , CEO of Kind-Hive and contributor to the Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026. In this lightning-fast snippet, Matt asks one core question: What is radical kindness, and why is it the ultimate business multiplier? In three minutes, discover: 🧠 The human-first lens. Why sh...

Matt Phelan sits down at Google HQ in London with Kaly Little, Head of HR, UK Large Customer Sales at Google and contributor to the Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026. He asks her one quick question: What is radical safety in the AI era? In under three minutes, discover: 🚀 Radical safety. Why absolute psychological safety is the non-negotiable permission slip for Google’s famous moonshot thin...

Matt briefly chats with Dr Amanda Henwood, a key contributor to the Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026. He asks her one simple question: What do you mean by clarity is capital? In under four minutes, discover: 💰 The metric. Why clarity functions as actual business capital, driving productivity and retention. 📉 The hidden tax. How a lack of clear conditions forces employees to blame themselve...

This week, we’re welcoming back our host, Matt Phelan, as he takes the baton back from Stefan Tornquist after his brilliant Global Workplace Happiness Report series. Matt dives straight into the deep end with a topic that bridges human emotion and high performance. His guest today is the exceptional Andrea Carter. Andrea is a performance consultant, researcher, and creator of the Belonging First m...

For the final time in this series, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist. Stefan is the lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report. He has spent the last few months interviewing the brilliant contributors to this project. While he's signing off for now, Stefan will return next year for our 2027 report. His final guest is the expert-friendly Dr Sarah Pass. Sarah is a senior lec...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist. He’s the lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report. Stefan is interviewing the experts shaping the future of work. His guest today is the fascinating Dr Anne Hsu. Anne is a lecturer in computer science and psychology at Queen Mary University of London. She’s an expert in resilience, motivation, and personal growth. Anne helps...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist. He’s the lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report. Stefan is interviewing the experts shaping the future of work. His guest today is the innovative Dr Rochelle Haynes! Rochelle is an expert in the "gig economy" and a specialist in global human resource management. She advises organisations on how to adapt to the ris...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist , lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report . He’s interviewing the experts shaping the future of work. His guest is the brilliant Fiona McDonnell . Fiona is a global executive with a career spanning giants like Amazon and Booking.com . She’s a veteran at using data to grow both businesses and people. She also authored Two Mirr...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist. He's the lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report. Stefan is interviewing the experts shaping the future of work. His guests today are the expert-friendly Verity Glasgow and Dr Shannon Hirst from the relationship charity OnePlus One. Verity is the CEO, and Shannon leads their research. They’ve spent years using evidence-b...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist. He's the lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report. Stefan is interviewing the experts shaping the future of work. His guest today is the fascinating Dr Amanda Henwood. Amanda is a practising behavioural scientist at Influence at Work. She advises world-class organisations on how to change mindsets and resolve complex beha...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist- lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report. Stefan is interviewing the experts contributing to the report. His guest today is the fascinating David Van Adelsberg. David is the co-founder of Irrational Capital. He bridges the gap between technology, human capital, and finance. David has spent years quantifying the connection bet...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist. He's the lead author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report. Stefan is interviewing the experts shaping the future of work. His guest today is the expert-friendly Dr Carrie Goucher. Carrie has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and founded Fewer Faster Bolder. She's transformed the meeting culture at over 150 companies. Car...

This week, we’re handing the host chair to Stefan Tornquist, author of our Global Workplace Happiness Report , as he interviews the experts shaping the future of work. His guest today is the fascinating Dr James Hewitt. James is a human performance scientist who advises some of the world’s largest organisations on how to build thriving environments and is the author of Regenerative Performance . F...

Most leaders treat "wellbeing" as a surface-level perk. Mark Fabian treats it as a science. I n our latest episode, our new (temporary) host Stefan Tornquist sits down with the University of Warwick policy expert and Cambridge researcher who literally wrote the history of wellbeing for our upcoming report. Mark moves past the clichés to explain the living debates and connections between philosophy...

Matt is handing over the microphone. In this emotional episode, he passes the hosting chair to Stefan Torvquist. Stefan is the lead researcher and editor behind the upcoming Global Workplace Happiness Report. He’s taking the baton to lead a special series of interviews with the academics and experts who’ve mapped the current state of world joy. This isn't just a change of voice. It's a dee...

Petra shares a bold claim from neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett: Your brain isn't for thinking. It's busy keeping your heart beating and managing your body's energy budget. Thinking is just a side hustle. We explore body budget . It's the energy you have available to do things. Simple tasks cost wildly different amounts depending on your mental state. Leaders love providing trai...

What if AI isn't the job-stealing villain we've been told to fear, but actually the key to unlocking wor kplace happiness? Join Matt Phelan, Co-CEO of The Happiness Index, and Suvodeep Das, VP of Global Marketing at Pluxee, for a conversation that flips the AI narrative on its head. Every business leader right now is being squeezed: their core business is under pressure, they're buildi...

What if AI isn’t changing your culture... just turning up the volume? 🤯 This week, the "AI Uncle" himself, Dan Södergren, returns for a record third time to unpack the Fifth Industrial Revolution — and why your mindset matters more than your tech stack. Dan’s message is clear: AI amplifies the leadership culture you already have. If it’s strong, you’ll thrive faster. If it’s flawed, you...

What if the biggest challenge facing your business isn't competition, but accidental unfairness built into your systems? 🤯 This week, we're joined by Bertille , a diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioner, to tackle the most complex and important questions of our time: equity in the workplace and the ethical challenge of AI . Bertille simplifies "equity" to a powerful concept: fairness and eq...

Matt Phelan sits down with Madalena Carey, founder of Happiness Business School, to explore a serious question: Why are over 90% of her clients reporting anxiety and burnout linked directly to the labour they do? This isn’t a chat about faking a smile. Madalena explains the real science that drives the Happiness Business School philosophy. True positive psychology isn't about ignoring negative emo...

The unconventional power of digital detox In a world of constant notifications and "always on" culture, what if the most strategic thing you can do for your business is to turn everything off? 🤯 This week, we're with Riina Gröhn , Chief People Officer at LIWLIG Group, who shares the story behind her company's unconventional all-employee event called Unplugged to Re-Connect . The...