Research, data, evidence and the stories of people focused on employee engagement, workplace happiness and driving performance at work.
Connect with Matt via LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewphelan/
You can download The Happiness Index's Global Workplace Happiness Report here
https://thehappinessindex.com/the-global-workplace-happiness-report/
Why your brain doesn't care if you're happy with Declan Edwards
This week, our host Matt Phelan sits down with Declan Edwards, founder of BU Happiness College, podcast host, and author of How to Be Happy. Known across Australia as "that happiness guy," Declan has spent over a decade translating dense positive psychology research into practical, everyday skills.
Matt and Declan unpack why chasing future success ruins present happiness, how to reframe gratitude, and why happiness is an intentional daily practice.
We explore:
🧠 The brain's survival trap. Why your brain doesn't care if you're happy. Its primary job is survival, meaning it is naturally hardwired with a negative cognitive bias that scans for threat and danger rather than joy.
🏆 The "I'll be happy when" myth. Why treating happiness as a future destination tied to an achievement or milestone is a gamble that rarely pays off. Real success is a secondary consequence of living intentionally today.
🛠️ The 5 core skills of happiness. A breakdown of the core curriculum from BU Happiness College: managing emotions, introspecting, retraining the brain out of negative cognitive bias, knowing yourself deeply, and aligning your life to your values.
☕ The learnable skill of savouring. How moving past the "attention economy" and intentionally experiencing a moment—like drinking a good coffee—rewires your brain to enjoy the life you already have.
🔌 The 3 dimensions of disconnection. Why feeling severed from yourself, from others, or from a broader purpose drains emotional well-being across global workforces.
Declan argues that happiness isn't a fixed trait or a mystical destination. It is a skill—much like learning a language or playing an instrument—that requires curiosity, daily practice, and the permission to suck at it while you learn.
Are you ready to stop chasing success and start practising happiness?
🌏 Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026: https://thehappinessindex.com/the-global-workplace-happiness-report/ (https://thehappinessindex.com/the-global-workplace-happiness-report/)
🇬🇧 UK Workplace Happiness Report 2026: https://thehappinessindex.com/uk-workplace-happiness-report/ (https://thehappinessindex.com/uk-workplace-happiness-report/)
📊 Talk to an expert: https://thehappinessindex.com/request-a-demo/ (https://thehappinessindex.com/request-a-demo/)
16 Sept 2026
Olya Yakzhina: Is HR part of the employee experience problem?
This week, our host Matt Phelan returns to the podcast for an insightful conversation with Olya Yakzhina, Head of People & Culture at Work.Life—sponsors of both the Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026 and the upcoming UK edition. Olya also hosts The Modern Employer podcast.
In this five-minute summary of their high-impact discussion, Matt and Olya tackle the delicate friction between building a culture people love and demanding high performance.
We explore:
📈 The performance-engagement correlation. Why simply setting up metrics and demanding output fails without engagement. True high performance begins by raising the baseline employee experience.
⚙️ Operational hygiene vs. emotional atmosphere. How HR teams get trapped fixing visible, defensible operational tasks while neglecting intangible feelings like belonging and inspiration.
🏰 The Disneyland principle of workplace systems. Every system creates an emotional reaction. Like the underground tunnels at Disneyland, HR processes should run seamlessly behind the scenes rather than creating friction in employees' faces.
🐅 The sleeping tiger trap. Why organisations over-invest in early onboarding while neglecting long-term employees. Leaders naturally rush to manage immediate risks (the running tiger) while letting tenured talent drift (the sleeping tiger).
🏢 Presence vs. real culture. Why presenteeism is a mindset—not a location. Presenteeism bias exists just as strongly in remote and hybrid teams as it does in traditional offices.
Olya argues that every system, framework, and policy must be designed with its emotional output in mind. When HR over-operationalises without considering human feelings, it stops being the solution and becomes part of the problem.
Are you ready to rethink your workplace systems?
7 Jul 2026
The accidental manager crisis and the cost of untrained leaders with Kay Gunn
This week on the podcast, our host Matt Phelan sits down for a deep, insightful conversation with someone who has been a trusted partner since the early days of The Happiness Index.
His guest is Kay Gunn MSc FCIPD, a veteran people director and the founder of her own leadership development consultancy - Kay Gunn Limited.
Kay specialises in a critical yet chronically under-invested area of business: training first-time people managers. Drawing from her extensive background in professional sport and elite customer service operations, Kay helps organisations stop the automatic promotion trap before it breaks their teams.
We explore
📉 The accidental manager stat. Shocking research from the Chartered Management Institute reveals that 82% of managers enter their roles as "accidental managers"—promoted because they are technically great at their jobs, but given zero formal training on how to actually lead people.
🧠 The spouse-level mental health impact. A startling global statistic shows that 60% of employees say their job is the biggest factor influencing their mental health. In fact, a manager has just as much impact on an employee's mental well-being (69%) as their spouse.
💸 The true cost of the promotion mistake. Promoting your star technical performer into a management role they hate creates a massive financial and cultural tax. It leads to disengaged teams, client dissatisfaction, and an average upfront cost of £19,000 just to replace a basic entry-level manager.
🚪 The anonymity of exit surveys. Why traditional exit interviews fail to capture the real reasons people leave. Employees rarely have the emotional energy to risk a hostile reaction, making anonymous data collection essential for uncovering toxic management.
🎯 Deliberate development over old work biases. Why organisations must decouple ambition from headcount. True business maturity means building alternative career pathways where an individual’s financial growth and responsibility can expand without forcing them to manage a team.
Kay argues that you would never allow someone to drive a train or fly a plane without a qualification, yet we routinely hand over the physical and mental well-being of entire workforces to completely untrained leaders. With major legislative changes and hybrid complexities on the rise, continuing the accidental manager model is a financial and human risk businesses can no longer afford to take.
Are you ready to stop treating leadership development as the exception and make it the norm?
📊 Check out The Happiness Index https://thehappinessindex.com/
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
139,426
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Spotify
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 44 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
42
Social presence
0
YouTube
82
Engagement
32
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