Dubai: The workplace should be a happy place, both for the employees and the company’s bottom line, a chief happiness officer told the Global Dialogue for Happiness Forum in Dubai on Saturday.
The forum was a “curtain raiser” for Sunday’s opening of the fifth World Government Summit in Dubai.
In her talk on ‘The Return on Happiness’, Nisha Jagtiani, group director and chief happiness officer at Landmark Group, said: “Happiness is all about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. We need to create the right environment so that people can create a meaningful impact in your organisation.”
She added: “The UAE forefathers have passed on the baton of happiness to the country’s youth and it is our responsibility to take this movement forward as we continue the ‘pursuit of happiness’.”
The session was moderated by Jenn Lim, co-founder and CEO of ‘Delivering Happiness’. It explored the private sector’s potential to drive well-being in society.
According to Jagtiani: “Happy employees, as stated by an Oxford Study, are six times more energetic, and they take lesser sick leave with their productivity being much higher. Happy employees are much more creative, innovative and entrepreneurial, which lead to sustained profitability in any business over a period of time.”
She added: “At Landmark Group, we have created several initiatives that resonate with our core philosophy set by our founder, my father Micky Jagtiani, to ‘create exceptional value for all the lives we touch’. We all have lived this ethos for the last 44 years and our platform called the ‘Landmark Happiness Movement’ has impacted 40,000 of our Landmarkers across the GCC, and more recently to another 20,000 in India.
“We aim to bring about a positive change as happier people create happier customers which in turn creates happier communities leading to a sustainable healthier business.”