International Day of Happiness, wellbeing indexes and the B-Corp movement
International Day of Happiness 20th March 2026
Last Friday marked International Happiness Day, a day now celebrated by 193 UN member states aims to promote happiness, wellbeing and mental health as universal goals.
Celebrating positive emotions may seem obvious, but it turns out we only started celebrating it in 2013, a year after the world happiness report was first published and 3 years before the first World Happiness summit was launched (WOHASU).
There are numerous studies to prove that happiness boosts productivity - happy workers are more productive and happy children do better in life. As if that wasn't obvious. Yet we still obsess exam results, balance sheets and the holy grail of human progress, GDP growth.
Bottom line is we are focused too much on outputs and running too fast which seems to be a race to the bottom, burning out people and burning up the planet. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Countries measuring happiness over GDP
So who is taking the lead on changing this? Bhutan has been measuring wellbeing over GDP, using its "Gross National Happiness" (GNH) index since 1972. This has massively reduced poverty and improved health, education and environmental metrics. Other countries including New Zealand, Scotland, Iceland, Wales, Finland, and Canada, have adopted wellbeing-focused frameworks, although not at the expense of GDP.
The B Corp Movement
Is there a cultural shift happening within organisations? March also marks B-Corp month - the B-Corp movement, a global initiative which prioritises people, communities, and the planet, is gaining traction. Since B Lab's founding in 2006, the B Corp movement has become a global force for systemic change. In the last 3 years, employment in B Corps has doubled, to reach over a million across 10,000 companies on six continents, united by a shared commitment to creating more inclusive, equitable and purpose-driven workplaces.
A purpose driven workplace prioritises sustainable performance where people work to their strengths and towards a common mission with managers that support their growth. It means leaving people in a better state when they leave than when they joined. The same which could be said for society and the planet as whole. This is what young professionals are telling us and demanding from employers today.
Yoga classes and an apps which give you points for a healthy lifestyle are not going to cut it any longer. Young professionals are, more than any previous generation, prepared to hold employers accountable for setting high standards and rightly so. The real wages of average workers has stagnated for the past two decades while pay for top execs continues to soar in no proportion to performance. And it's not as if employer's can offer job security with the average lifespan of a company on a downward trajectory.
In other news….
I recently read that the Global AI Companion market is set to reach approx. $50 billion this year! Should this not be a call for us to be better at being human? That starts by making people feel heard and respected and giving them a sense of purpose.
This post was written by Mark - you can follow him here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markkingbravo/
