Happiness & Wellbeing Design Agency
Wellbeing is “next generation” corporate governance and policy design. A unifying, cross-cutting theme, wellbeing will be the way governments develop policies that help communities prosper and the way the private sector empowers their workforce to build business value. GCA has developed a wellbeing policy framework that is tailored to meet the needs of the private sector. This framework embraces what we call “Commercial Life” – the input the private sector has in transforming their respective communities into more progressive collectives, cities, and countries. Based on international standards such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, our approach is designed to make a company more productive, creative, responsive, and constructive across its business operations.
GCA has a team of experts with backgrounds in Positive Psychology, Finance, Public Relations, Banking, Education, Government and Public Policy. They have an understanding of the scientific literature informing wellbeing policy design as well as its application to private sector needs. Our team conducts peer reviewed research about happiness and wellbeing, including academic work articulating the needs for the inclusion of private sector entities as a component of overall happiness and wellbeing agendas around the world.
GCA will partner with businesses to develop a tailored approach to assessing organizational happiness and wellbeing policies and procedures while suggesting innovative ways to foster further wellbeing through novel policy and procedures implementation, as well as capacity building.
WORKPLACES
Happiness Matters at Work
The ‘Happiness Matters at Work’ is a workplace positivity program rooted in positive organizational psychology, which offers employees the tools to generate more positive and productive workplace experiences. These tools create changes in thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors, encouraging employees to take responsibility for their broader wellbeing and include topics like workplace social connections and meaning/purpose at work. Participants are encouraged to take on initiatives, habits and change projects in the workplace. The course is spread over six modules and can be done on a weekly basis or over the course of a two-day workshop.
Character Matters at Work
Workplace character strengths include persistence, integrity/ethics, social intelligence, vitality, and self-regulation. These can be useful in determining employee capabilities and the soft skills required during the recruitment and selection of personnel. Strengths can also be useful in determining team composition; for instance, idea creators are usually high in creativity, vitality, curiosity, while implementers score high on persistence, integrity and self-regulation. Strengths development can even be used as part of annual reviews. The ‘Character Matters’ course begins with a half-day workshop to orient employees to the concept of strengths during which they identify their strengths and develop plans to craft their jobs to be more amenable to those. Additional modules are offered based on the identified need for relevant strengths development.
Tolerance and Diversity at Work
Most workplaces are diverse by default. Yet, many struggle with how to deal with so much of it. In this three-day “Developing Inclusive and Tolerant Workplaces” course, we help organizations recognize and capitalize on the opportunities inherent in a diverse workforce. The course offers employees and managers a series of questions, conversations, emotional experiences and eventual commitments that pertain to the range of values, behaviors, and attitudes present in all workplaces. It aims to engage employees first in becoming aware of how their beliefs and biases are formed and permeate the workplace, and second, in generating and solving issues by committing to new norms of social behavior and conflict resolution. Lessons in the science of wellbeing complement a well-rounded experience where all employees can actively build better organizations for everyone.
LEADERSHIP
Leadership Authenticity
The “Authentic Leadership” program focuses on facilitating a one or two day workshop on the Authentic Leadership Development Model. In this session, leaders will identify hot spots (adversity moments) and learn how those hot spots are actually opportunities for accelerating a leader’s self-awareness, behavioural integrity, organizational relationships and sense of compassion. The result is a more authentic leader who is more aligned with those they lead.
Strategic Alignment
The “Strategic Alignment” program is a one or two day facilitation event where we take a strength-based approach with the whole of the organization to co-create the alignment of mission, strategy and tasks across the organization. This method has a significant impact on attaching purpose to the employee’s career, creating immediate buy-in on strategic initiatives, and gleaning insights for senior leaders of the organization.
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Happiness Matters in School
We work with schools and universities to implement positive psychology/positive educational intervention programs right in the classroom. We have year-long weekly intervention programs for elementary, junior high/high school and university students. These include student manuals, teacher guides, as well as suggested measures useful in assessing changes to student wellbeing. We are available to do the teacher training for such programs and offer education in positive psychology and positive education to teachers themselves. We independently assess the changes made in classrooms based on our programs and have published many of these results in the scientific literature.
Character Matters in School
We have a character course for high school and university students which not only focuses on the development of character skills for a good life, but those needed and currently not taught by most institutions to prepare students for the workplace as well. Strengths include emotional self-regulation, integrity and honesty, persistence/dealing with failure, and a love of learning, among others. We embed these into the development of a CV orLinkedIn profile, brainstorm about where students can take on additional skills, and practise interviewing as examples. We use a variety of activities, examples and vignettes to help them learn about the workplace and what is required of them beyond a degree. Our goal is to develop not only good workers, but good citizens.
GOVERNMENTS AND MINISTRIES
Visioning and Planning for National Wellbeing
We are especially proud to offer a Master Class in “Building Wellbeing into National Policy” for post-secondary students studying in political science, sociology, diplomacy, or international affairs, as well as interested governments leaders, ministers, policy practitioners and other relevant organizations across the region. This course focuses on introducing concepts of happiness and wellbeing as they apply to public policy-making and how best to design, implement, and measure happiness and wellbeing policies as solutions to community and socio-economic development.