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In a quest for reliable indicators of individual and organizational well-being, the last few years have seen a surge in research on happiness - its drivers, its relations to material possessions and money, and its impacts on health and work. An increasingly influential global group of economists, psychologists, marketers, designers and government officials are busy refining existing formulas for measuring and predicting happiness. Some leading countries and businesses already publish national happiness statistics in parallel to economic figures for a more complete assessment of prosperity.

In the traditional, profit-driven model of business, money does, by definition, equal happiness. But as the focus for many organizations expands beyond profits to include a host of other factors (e.g., their environmental and social impacts), a satisfied workforce becomes a more reliable indicator of organizational well-being, and an important means to achieving true triple-bottom-line success. Employee happiness surveys have grown in popularity since the rise of such assessments on a larger scale; countries including Bhutan, France and the UK have adopted a “happiness index” as an alternative prosperity measure to GDP, using the findings to help inform future policy. Applying this methodology to business, more and more organizations - including companies such as Zappos and Nestlé Purina - are correlating employee well-being levels to productivity, which in turn informs profitability.