Stop measuring engagement, start measuring happiness - with Nic Marks (#136)

For decades, organisations have obsessed over employee engagement. But what if we've been measuring the wrong thing? What if engagement isn't the key to organisational performance after all?

In this episode, Katie sits down with happiness researcher, statistician and author Nic Marks to explore why happiness is the foundation of performance.

Nic has spent more than 30 years studying what makes people and societies flourish. His TED Talk on the Happy Planet Index has been viewed more than two million times. His new book, Happiness is a Serious Business, challenges one of the most widely accepted ideas in management. Instead of focusing on how much discretionary effort employees are willing to give, Nic argues that leaders should start by asking a much simpler question: are people happy?

Katie and Nic explore the limitations of employee engagement, why happiness is a better predictor of performance than many leaders realise and how organisations can measure what really matters.

Along the way, they discuss why boredom may be more damaging than stress, why feelings are data, how relationships shape our experience of work and Nic's deceptively simple formula for creating better teams: Measure. Meet. Repeat.