10 STEPS FOR BUILDING A STRATEGY FOR 

HAPPINESS AT WORK  
 
Let’s talk about building a strategy for happiness and the overall strategic perspective of building 
a happier workplace. I mean one of the really good news about happiness at work is that there 
are so many things you can do on an individual basis to make yourself and the people around 
you happier at work. And, those are well-established things like praise and recognition, like 
random acts of workplace kindness, like a friendly cheerful good morning. All of those work to 
make yourself and the people around you happier. All of those are awesome, and we’ve talked a 
lot about those in previous conferences. But this time I want to talk about the overall strategic 
perspective because what you can do as an individual will affect you and the people you work 
with on your immediate team.  
 

 
 

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What if you want the whole company to be happy? What if you want to create a happy, 
multinational organisation with hundreds or even thousands of employees? How do you do that? 
And, that requires not only individual action but also top-level strategic focus on happiness at 
work.  
 
Having visited hundreds of the world's happiest workplaces, I want to share 10 things that I've 
seen a lot of these workplaces do. I’m not saying that all of these workplaces do all of the 10, I’m 
not saying that your workplace should do all 10. But you need to know that if you want not just 
happy pockets in your organisation, and if you want to create an organisation that is entirely 
happy, these are 10 strategic focuses that will help a lot. In a nutshell, we need to include 
happiness in everything, in everything we do in the organisation. We need to ask ourselves: “Is 
this going to increase happiness? If the answer is yes, then we should do it. If the answer is no, 
then we probably should not do it.  
 
So, without further ado, we present you 10 strategic steps you need to take to build a strategy for 
happiness: 
 

#1 Top Leadership Must Walk the Talk  

 
The number one thing is that the top leadership must be on board with this idea. Top leadership 
must believe in it and they must walk the talk. It’s not enough to pay lip service to happiness. 
They’ve got to mean it and they’ve got to embody it and model it themselves. If they don’t, it’s 
just never gonna work. And I think my favourite example of this is the example given by Herb 
Kelleher who was the first president of Southwest airlines. He said it very very clearly: “It has to 
be job one. It can’t slip to being job two, three, four or five. Because, then you’ve lost it. No matter 
how busy you get, taking care of your employees, being interested in your employees, 
communicating with your employees, honoring your employees is still job one.” And, that’s 
something Southwest Airlines has been very very clear about for the entirety of the company’s 
history. And that’s why you get behavior like this:  
 
(A woman, a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines flight is giving instructions to the 
passengers before the plane takes off):​ ​“You may pretend I have your attention for just a few 
moments: My ex-husband, my boyfriend and my attorney are going to show you safety features 
on this 737-800 series. It’s been a long day for me. To properly fasten your seatbelt slide the flat 
end in the buckle. To release, lift up on the buckle. Position your seat belt tight and low across 
your hips like my grandmother wears her support bra. If you get mad and wanna take your toys 
and go home, there are 8 ways to get there. Two forward exit doors, 2 over wing window exits, 2 
rear exist. There are signs overhead and disco lights on the floor near each exit. Everybody gets  

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a door prize in the seatback pocket in front of you along with dirty diapers, chewing gum 
wrappers, banana peels and all other gifts you leave for us. Right on the top is a safety  
information card. Take it out, check it out. You’ll notice in the highly unlikely event that the 
captain lands us near a hot tub. Everybody gets their teeny weeny yellow southwest bikini. One 
size fits all. Take it out only when told to do so. Place it over your head, put that strap around 
your waist, buckle it in front, pull it tight, and once outside, pull the red tab to inflate. My 
attendants are coming by hoping you’ll tell them how good-looking they are. They’re gonna 
make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright and absolutely the most 
comfortable position possible. And your carry-on items are crammed and shoved completely 
under the seat in front of you leaving absolutely no room for your knees or feet. As you know, it’s 
a no-smoking, no whining, no complaining flight. It’s a “please”, and “thank-you” and “you are 
such a good-looking flight attendant” flight. Smoking is never allowed onboard at Southwest. If 
you are caught smoking in the lavatory, the fine for that is $2000. If you wanted to pay for your 
airfare, you should have flown somebody else.”  
 
I think that’s just amazing. Now, what’s kind of interesting is that Southwest Airlines is the only 
major airline in the world that has been making money every year for 45 years. In an incredibly 
tough industry where other airlines are losing billions, they have been profitable every single  
year. And if you ask them how that is possible, their top leadership says it’s because they put 
their employees first. And, they have embodied that and modeled that in so many ways. When 
we make our employees happy they do a really good job that makes customers happy, and the 
customers come second. When customers are happy, they come back, we make more money 
and the stockholders are happy. Stockholders come third. So, this top-level focus on happiness, 
this absolute belief that happiness has to come first, and the willingness of the leadership to walk 
the talk, and actually live it, not just talk about it, is the number one thing that a company must do 
if they want a happy organisation.  
 

#2 Have a Positive Company Vision  

 
The company’s vision cannot just be about increasing revenues by 1.8% in the next fiscal quarter. 
That is boring as hell and won’t inspire very many people. So, what you need is a positive vision. 
And, this is surprisingly hard. I went to do a speech at the London Business School, and I saw 
they proudly had their vision engraved on a plaque. And, this is what their vision is all about: “Our 
vision is to be pre-eminent global business school.” So, what is wrong with this version? It’s not a 
vision, this is a goal! It might be a very valuable goal but it’s not a vision because it’s about them.  
 
 

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It’s not about making the world better or happier in any measurable way. They’ve actually 
updated it since then, and now their vision is: “We strive to have a profound impact on the way 
the world does business and the way business impacts the world.” Now this is a vision because  
now it’s not about them, but it’s about something bigger than them, and that’s what a company 
needs. It needs a mission, a purpose, a vision that is bigger than the company itself and that 
inspires the people in the company.  
 
My favourite example of this is Patagonia. They make swimwear, skiwear, outdoor gear, amazing 
sportswear, and their vision hangs in there. Their mission hangs proudly in the headquarters in 
California: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and 
implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” They want to use business to create a better 
environment because they believe that our environment is being threatened by global 
overconsumption and they do that in so many ways. As an employee of Patagonia, you can take 
a leave of absence to go work for an environmental charity. They donate 1% of turnover every 
year to environmental charities. A couple of years ago, for Black Friday, which is the biggest 
shopping day in the U.S, they actually put out this ad saying: “Don’t buy this jacket”. And there’s a 
long text saying that our environment is being threatened by overconsumption. What they are 
actually saying is: “Let’s say you have an old jacket, use that. Can you buy a used jacket, do that.  
 
 
 

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Do you have a jacket that is broken that you can have repaired, do that. And, only if you can’t do 
any of those things should you buy this jacket.” 
I think that’s a great way to serve your mission.  
 
Here’s the cool thing: A good company vision is ultimately about happiness. When you look at 
this vision it should be immediately, instantly clear why this vision makes the world a better and 
happier place. For instance, protecting the environment makes us happier, and I think that’s a 
wonderful example. So, have a positive company vision!  
 

#3 Focus on Happiness - Not Satisfaction 

 
Tip number three for the company is to focus on happiness and not satisfaction. I see a lot of 
companies make the same mistake nowadays. They want to attract the best employees, and 
make them stay in the company and work for a long time by giving them free fruit or smoothie or 
a fancy office space. However, none of these are ever going to work. You can have a company 
where you give your employees every single thing from that list, and it’s still not a happy 
company because those things don’t make us happy - they make us satisfied. A lot of companies  
measure job satisfaction and focus on job satisfaction and that’s a mistake. We need to focus on 
happiness at work. Those two things are obviously related, but they’re not the same thing.  
 
Here’s the difference: Job satisfaction is what you think about your job. When you sit down and 
rationally weigh all the pros and cons of your job situation, are you satisfied or not?  
On the other hand, happiness at work is what you feel about your job and how working there 
makes you feel. This does not mean that you need to be happy every single second of every 
single day. It’s more about whether you feel happy at work in general. It’s about going home after 
a working day thinking: “Today was a good day”, and looking forward to coming back to work the 
next day. That is a radical difference because then it’s not about fruit and smoothies and a gym in 
the office. Then it’s about two things in our model. The two things that actually make us happy at 
work are results and relationships. And that’s what we need to focus on instead. Giving people a 
chance to get great results, do meaningful work while knowing that that work is important and 
that it makes a difference, and to build relationships, knowing that they belong somewhere. They 
need to feel that they are valued as human beings, not just as co-workers. We like you, we’re 
glad that you are on our team. We respect you and we treat you nicely, and these are the things 
that actually make us happy at work, cause positive emotions in our model, and that’s what we 
need to focus on. And, all of that extra stuff, it’s fine, I have nothing against it, but it’s not what 
makes us happy. For instance, a big thing about Danish workplaces right now is free fruit. A lot of 
Danish places say: “We need our employees to be happy, so let’s give them free fruit.” And, I 
have nothing against fruit, fruit is fine, but my question is how many Danes are gonna go home  

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from work today and say: ”Oh my God, I had the greatest day at work, I got an apple.” Nobody 
does that.  
 

#4 Appoint a Chief Happiness Officer and a Happiness Team 

 
Appoint somebody who is in charge of this process, somebody who has time and energy to focus 
on this. I think that it’s incredibly valuable and I see that in so many workplaces. I just spoke to a 
team from SAP who just hired a chief happiness officer for the team of salespeople to focus on 
this. And, I want to make it clear that when you find a chief happiness officer, it is not their job to 
make everybody else happy. That would be impossible, right? Can you imagine that person 
going around with a clown nose asking: “Are you happy today? How can I make you happy?” 
That would not work. A chief happiness officer’s job is more like a project manager, somebody 
who is in charge of the happiness project. So, come up with ideas, make a plan, follow up and 
celebrate  
the wins that you achieve in this project. I think that this is the job of chief happiness officer. 
Having somebody in that role can be incredibly powerful. Also, having a team of employees who  
are passionate about this project is also crucial for building a successful strategy for happiness. 
We’re actually gonna hear that in the very next presentation I’ll show you. In this session we are 
going to listen to a happiness team from an organisation.  
 

#5 Have a Plan but Include Surprises 

 
I think that it’s important that this process, this entire happiness process is planned. And I think a 
good plan goes maybe six or twelve months into the future. So, you’re not just coming up with 
things on a random ad hoc basis, but you actually need to create a plan that has a few big 
initiatives, or maybe small initiatives. I think that works really well. So, you’re not just doing...you 
know...we want to make our company happy, we’ll have a big summer party. It’s nice, but what 
about the rest of the year? I think you need many small simple initiatives as well, and then you 
need a plan that has something for everyone - something that addresses both results and 
relationships. I think it’s really, really important. Once you create a plan, you also need surprises. 
The thing is that when we expect some great things to happen to us like a summer party we are 
happy and excited but not as much as when we don’t know that something great is about to 
happen. In other words, when something nice happens to us that surprises us, it makes us even 
happier. And, I want to show you an example. This example is from Innocent Drinks in the UK that 
makes amazing smoothies. Here’s an example from our conference last year of a random 
surprise thing they did.  

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A guy talking about how he surprised his colleagues for Valentine's Day: ​“We have two lifts at 
Innocent. If you ask me they are the most boring part of the building, no one does anything in a 
lift. So I went to a big supermarket and I spent 60 pounds on all that terrible stuff that teenagers 
buy each other on Valentine's Day and I turned the lift into the lift of love. So, I bought a helium 
balloon I put bunting up, I bought a CD player and Barry White, put it in the corner. It made for 
some very awkward lift journeys. It was very good, I bought love-heart post-its and stuck them up 
and I’d written who I fancied in the office. By the end of the day, it was full, everyone found the 
moment to tell the person they fancied them, but this cost me 60 pounds. Now, a lot of 
companies have a big budget, and I’ve got a great budget to make these things work. But what I 
asked for was that 60 pounds not to buy four more bottles of wine at the Christmas party which 
would be in my budget, but to make people come to work. This guy Dan had a terrible day at 
work, but the thing he wanted to go home to tell his girlfriend was: “Look at what Innocent did 
today.” I want to make people smile every day. “ 
I think that this example shows the value of those small things you can do for your employees, 
those surprising things that just come out of the blue.  
 

#6 Hire for Happiness 

 
Tip number six is also incredibly important, and that’s to hire for happiness. If you want a happy 
workplace, you should not hire miserable bastards, because they will just come in and make 
everybody else equally unhappy. There’s a company in Seattle which makes famous games like 
Valve, Counter-Strike, Portal, and many others. They also have an online store called the Steam 
Store where we can buy computer games online, and they’re very clear about this. They say that 
hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. And, I couldn't agree more - it is the most 
important thing. And, a lot of companies overlook this. A lot of companies hire for skills, and I 
think you need to take skills into account, but I also think you need to hire for happiness. A great 
example is Pret, a chain of cafes in the UK and around the world. They say you cannot hire 
someone who can make a sandwich and teach them how to be happy, so they hire happy 
people and teach them how to make a sandwich. And, I think this is a beautiful, beautiful way to 
hire for happiness. Southwest Airlines does the same thing and here are some examples. 
 
A woman talking about how they hire people who have a sense of humour: “​ You know we’ve 
always thought that a sense of humour was a very important thing for our employees to have, 
and we’ve always been told and always asked our employees to take the business very 
seriously but not take themselves too seriously. So we like to really check our applicants for 
employment to see if they have a sense of humour. And, actually you might think that’s really 
difficult, but it’s really not, it’s very easy to see whether someone can enjoy a good healthy sense  

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of humour. And you might do it by showing up as the interviewer, the recruiter going out with 
your clothes on backwards. See if anybody laughs, see if someone just stares at you like, you 
know, it’s just an everyday occurance. One of our pilots (we have a lot of our line employees that 
are actually a part of the interview process) used to pretend that he was an applicant. So he’d sit 
in the reception room with all the nervous applicants and wring his hands and say: “Oh my gosh 
what do you think they’re gonna ask us and go on and on and on.” And then the applicant would 
walk in for one-on-one interview and there Frank would be on the other side of the desk. Well, 
you know if people can’t laugh about that sort of thing, they’re just a little too taken with 
themselves for us to consider them a perfect match for our culture.” 
 
That’s just one example, but I think that it is incredibly important to be careful about who we hire 
and that we do not hire just for skills but also for happiness. You need to hire somebody who will 
come in and be happy at that job. And I think it is also important that you do not hire the wrong 
people. Here’s a fantastic quote by Dan Jacobs, a head of talent at Apple: “I’d rather have a hole  
in my team than an asshole in my team”. I think that’s incredibly important. Figure out if this 
person is somebody who’s naturally happy, cheerful, friendly. Think about if this person is 
somebody who will be happy in this job, in this team before you hire them.  
 

#Organise Happy Onboarding 

 
Also, make sure you organise happy onboarding. The first few days, the first few weeks at the job 
are incredibly stressful. And, I think it’s important that people become happy in their jobs very, 
very quickly and that we treat them as well as we possibly can so that they quickly achieve 
positive results and great relationships. My favorite example of this is from Zappos, an online 
retailer based in Vegas with 2000 employees. They are very very happy workplace. I have visited 
them several times. One of my favourite things is that in the HR department they have a ball pit 
that you can book for meetings. It’s actually very hard to get a job at Zappos. They really want to 
make sure you will fit in and will be happy at work. And, also, once you start working there, the 
first four weeks is training. They go through four weeks of onboarding which includes 50% of the 
skills employees will need, like computer systems, technology and everything else and 50% of 
the culture. I think that this is an absolutely brilliant thing to do. By the way, Zappos does one 
radical thing, as far as I know, they are the only company in the world that does it. Namely, during 
the onboarding process in the first week, they will tell you: “Listen, we know that working in 
Zappos is not for everybody, so if you quit right now we will give you $3000”. This is probably a 
month and a half wages for a lot of their entry level employees. So, yeah, what they’re saying is 
that they will pay their employees to quit. They want you to be sure that you want to work there.  
 

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By the way, if you turn down the offer and say that you want to work at Zappos, they’ll come back 
three months later and now the offer is $4000 to quit. Yeah, they want you to be absolutely sure  
that you fit in there. I think that’s a brilliant concept, and they are, as far as I know, the only 
organisation in the world that does it.  
 

#8 Promote and Train Managers for Happiness  

 
A lot of what we are talking about here may seem obvious to us, but to many managers and 
many leaders it doesn't. Maybe, they’ve taken an MBA or a business degree. And I can tell you 
that in most business schools you will learn nothing about happiness, so maybe we need to train 
them. And, also, maybe we need to be very careful about who we promote leadership positions 
to. So, it’s not just about driven and ambitious people but it’s actually about the people who are  
very happy and can make their employees happy, and help them get results and build 
relationships. My favourite example of that is the company in Sao Paulo in Brazil called Semco. 
One of the things they do every six months is to rate their immediate manager. Every manager 
gets a score, a combined score from zero to a hundred. Then all of those scores are published 
inside the organisation so every employee can see exactly how good every manager is and then, 
here’s the kicker: as an employee of Semco, you’re free to choose any manager you want. So, if  
you’re working for that guy who just got a 39 you can say: “Arrivederci, I’m gonna go there and 
work for her, she’s got a 94.” So, suddenly they have no bad managers. It’s described in this 
book called “Seven-Day Weekend”. I highly recommend it. Two more tips.  
 

#9 Share the good stories.  

 
This is something every organisation really, really ought to do. The best example I’ve seen of this 
is a company in Chile called Transbank. They handle all credit card payments in the entire 
country and they have a book called “El Valor De Lo Que Tenemos” (“The value of what we 
have”), which is basically a celebration of all the good things in the organisation. There are so 
many good things going on in organisations all the time but we never talk about them. We talk 
mostly about the frustrations and the problems and the goals we haven’t achieved. But in this 
book, they celebrate all the cool stuff that is going on regarding business results, that they are 
named the best workplace in Chile and the day where they can take their children to work, and 
all the charity work they do. So they have this entire celebration of all the good things in their  
 

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organisation. They printed this book and gave it to everybody, customers and employees, and I 
think it’s a beautiful way to share all the good things we have in the organisation because if we  
don’t focus on them, if we don’t talk about the good things, it’s hard to be grateful for the good 
things.  
 
 
#10 Use Heartcount (tool) to always know what your employees 
think and how they feel at work 
 
When a company is growing, management can grow apart from people. But, they still want to 
know when something is not working well. The best way to retain your employees is to always 
know how they feel and what they think, even about the least important things at work. 
Heartcount gives you those answers and shows you how many people want to be there at your 
company. Heartcount was born in a company which has grown to over 50 people when it started  
facing everyday challenges when it comes to knowing what is going on with their employees. 
Asking people to do a one-hundred-questions survey twice a year didn't help them identify how 
people feel at work, if they are happy or have grown on a personal and professional level. 
Heartcount was the solution to that challenge. Happy employees will serve customers better, and 
happy customers drive growth. This tool is not a substitute for the annual survey, it complements 
the survey with more information. Heartcount is a Danish product and who knows more about 
happiness than the happiest people in the World :-)  
 
What is Heartcount?  
 
Heartcount is an AI powered tool, which measures happiness at work in a new and better way. It 
is a tool for tracking results and relationships (personal fulfilment, progress, relationships with 
colleagues and managers) that influence happiness at work. It also gives you immediate 
feedback and operational information for everyone in the ecosystem, and it improves the 
decision-making process and outcomes based on real-time analysis. Heartcount system brings 
the entire ecosystem together, from employees, through HR office to managers. The value of the 
tool is not the data it provides, it is how you use the tool and what you do with the data. This tool 
provides you with valuable data on a weekly basis so that you can react in time.  
 
How it works?  
 
Every Friday, everyone on a team gets only 3 questions and it takes up to 15 seconds for the 
people to answer them. They will see immediate results and they can compare their personal  

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results with the results of the rest of the company. A manager will see real-time answers and get 
notifications about people to keep an eye on.  
 
Benefits 
  
● Easy-to-use  
● Low-priced  
● No sign ups and password  
● Great visuality  
● Unique functionalities  
● Great user experience  
● Fit for purpose  
● You only pay for people that use the tool  
 
 
 

 
 
Interested? Feel free to book a demo so we can share our experiences with you, find out your 
pain points and come up with the solution and action plan to solve it. :-) 
 

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Conclusion 
 
So, those were 10 very, very quick tips and I hope they will inspire you to take a more strategic 
view on happiness in your organisation. And it all comes basically to what our motto is, and what 
we keep returning to. Happiness at work is something we do and if we want to create happier 
workplaces, we can’t just dream about it, we can’t just wish for it. We got to actually go out and 
do it and there are 10 ways an organisation can do it.  
 
 
 

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