The Hong Kong Happiness Index is dropping – Lyreco is trending up :)
Happiness Index
The Hong Kong Happiness Index continues to drop in the UN world happiness index ranking.
Ranked as the 71st happiest last year, the United Nations 2018 report places Hong Kong in position 76, among 156 countries and regions.
How does this translate to the workplace, and productivity?
Work is obviously a major factor affecting happiness. After all, you spend a good few hours at work right?
In Hong Kong’s case, a study by UBS shows that employees spend 50.1 hours working each week on average. That is 38% more than the world average.
Hrm, that seems like a lot of hours to me.
Specially taking into account that Hongkongers get 17 days of holidays. The global average is 23 per year.
How to Measure: Happiness Index at Work
One company which has managed to reverse the Happiness Index trend – on a workplace level – is Lyreco Hong Kong.
A worldwide distributor of office supplies and workplace products, the company’s mission is “To simplify life at work”.
Andrew Wong, Assistant Manager – IS, E-Business & QSS at Lyreco Hong Kong, recently installed a feedback system with smiley faces.
Using simplicity as a corner stone, the company gets ongoing insights into how their employees feel at work. Day after day.
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They then try to act on the feedback given by the employees.
Since they started in April, the Workplace Happiness at Lyreco is up 21%.
What a fantastic start!
Here’s Andrew and his colleagues at Lyreco sharing the positive message they sent out, to get colleagues to participate:
Dear colleagues,
Are you happy?
The happiness index of the people in Hong Kong is lower than in previous years.
At the same time, our company is also concerned about the happiness index of colleagues at work.
Therefore, the “Happiness Index Device” has been added to our statistics, to get an understanding of colleagues’ happiness index of the day.
As a result, it helps the company to conduct future reviews, improve the atmosphere and environment of the workplace, and promote more positive energy.
So when you exit the company at the grand entrance, join us on our journey!

Improving communication in the workplace
More internal communication planning examples here.
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