Five Months Out

Hello, and good morning, afternoon, and evening wherever you are.

Five months from now, the International Week of Happiness at Work begins.

That might still feel comfortably distant. But if your experience is anything like mine, September has a way of arriving before you are ready. And the conversations worth having, the ones that actually shift something in a team or an organisation, rarely happen in a single week. They tend to grow gradually, through small moments of attention paid over time.

So this is a good moment to slow down and look honestly at where things stand.

Gallup released its State of the Global Workplace 2026 report earlier this year, and the headline is worth sitting with.

Global employee engagement has dropped to 20 percent. That is the second consecutive year of decline, and the lowest level since 2020. Each percentage point represents roughly 21 million employees worldwide. Low engagement cost the global economy approximately 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity last year, which amounts to around 9 percent of global GDP.

The numbers are striking. But for me, what stands out is what they point to.

The Gallup report describes engagement as a measure of the psychological attachment workers have to their work, their team, and their employer. When that attachment weakens, people are still present, still completing tasks. But something essential is missing. And that something is not easily fixed by a policy change or a wellbeing programme.

It is fixed, slowly and imperfectly, by attention. By leadership that notices. By cultures that allow people to feel genuinely seen, heard, and valued.

On March 20, we gathered a panel for a live conversation on International Day of Happiness. The theme was social media and happiness. The question underneath it was simpler and perhaps more uncomfortable: what are we choosing to amplify?

Our guests brought different perspectives.

Skúli Bragi Geirdal, Head of the Icelandic Safer Internet Center, works with everyone from six-year-olds to university students to senior citizens, helping people develop healthier relationships with the digital world. His central point was about attention as a product.

Linda Carlisle, a Communications and Culture Advisor, spoke about the exhaustion many of us feel from constant negativity online, and how she has started deliberately shaping her own algorithm by engaging with the positive content she wants to see more of. It is a small act of agency, but it is also a reminder that we are not entirely without influence.

Patty Pick-Franke of Habitmasters challenged us to move from being consumers to creators. To put positive stories out into the world, not because it feels nice, but because our brains need five times more positive input than negative just to register on the same level.

What emerged from that conversation was something that applies as much to workplaces as it does to social media. We shape our environments through what we choose to notice and amplify. That is as true in a team meeting as it is in a social media feed.

One of the most important findings in the Gallup report is what is happening to managers specifically.

Since 2022, manager engagement has dropped nine points. The largest year-over-year decline came between 2024 and 2025, when it fell five points to 22 percent. Managers, who used to enjoy what Gallup calls an engagement premium, are now barely more engaged than the people they lead.

This matters enormously for the week ahead. The International Week of Happiness at Work is often championed by HR teams and wellbeing advocates. But the evidence keeps pointing to the same place: it is the direct manager who shapes daily experience most powerfully. Not through grand gestures, but through consistency, clarity, and the small habit of actually paying attention.

Gallup also found that in organisations where managers actively champion new approaches, employee uptake is significantly higher. The relationship between leadership behaviour and team experience is not theoretical. It is measurable and it is consistent.

The question this raises for September is a useful one. Who in your organisation is ready to lead that kind of conversation?

The International Week of Happiness at Work is not a campaign. It is not a branded initiative with a fixed format. It is a global invitation to create a moment of intentional attention.

Some organisations use it to host conversations. Others try small experiments: a team check-in with a different question, a session where someone shares what energises them at work, a moment to acknowledge what is working rather than what is not. Many simply create space to listen more carefully than usual.

What connects these approaches is the same thing that Patty described, what Skúli observed in schools where phones were put away and children started playing and talking again. When people feel genuinely present with each other, something shifts.

We do not need a perfect programme to create that. We need intention.

Not all workplace news this month arrived with data and gravity attached.

A sustainable agriculture startup called Harvesting Robotics made headlines last year after appointing a golden retriever named Denver to the role of Chief Happiness Officer. The co-founder introduced him on LinkedIn with a description that has since been shared widely: he does not code, he does not sit in on meetings, and he does not worry about KPIs.

What Denver does do, apparently, is provide on-demand stress relief through timely walk-ins.

The post went viral. And then people noticed that Denver has his own LinkedIn profile. His name is listed as Denver Pawlson. His education: Dog Training College. His networking, by all accounts, is impeccable.

There is something worth pausing on here, beneath the obvious charm of it. When a startup announces a dog as its Chief Happiness Officer and the internet responds with warmth rather than eye-rolls, it says something about what people are quietly hungry for at work. Not a formal programme. Not a policy document. Something that simply makes the room feel different when it walks in.

Denver, in other words, is doing what good managers are supposed to do. He just has better PR.

You can find Denver Pawlson on LinkedIn. His connection request acceptance rate is, we assume, 100 percent.

If you or your organisation feel curious about being involved this September, now is a good moment to begin.

We are starting early conversations around partnerships for 2026. Partner organisations help shape the direction and reach of the week by contributing perspectives, hosting activities, supporting learning, or amplifying the conversation. Partnerships are built around shared intent, not predefined templates.

If you would like to register early interest, explore what partnership might look like, or simply stay connected as plans develop, you are warmly invited to get in touch.

 The most meaningful conversations start before the week begins.

September 21st - 25th, 2026

International Week of Happiness at Work

internationalweekofhappinessatwork.com

Hedinn (Héðinn) Sveinbjörnsson
Iceland´s Chief Happiness Officer
International Week of Happiness at Work

Official Website: internationalweekofhappinessatwork.com
Save the Dates: September 21st - 25th, 2026

P.S. If you believe happiness at work should be the norm, not the exception, share this newsletter with someone who needs to hear it. The more voices, the bigger the impact.

P.P.S. Want to be part of the movement? Reply and let’s talk partnerships.

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