Why People are Happy or Not

TORONTO, Jan. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Andrew Faas, founder of the Faas Foundation and author of 'From Bully to Bull's-Eye, Move Your Organization Our of the Line of Fire' has released the following message.

Since my piece 'Message to Corporate America' many of my fellow Canadians have inquired why I used Norway as a country that should be studied rather than Canada. Simply put, Canada did not make the cut in the top ten of the happiness countries in the world and the 20 other indexes I referred to in the article; and Norway did. This is not to say that Canada should not be studied as should the other 19 countries on the list to determine why people are happy or not. To get a more balanced perspective an additional 10 indexes were compared.

The following compares the 30 socio/economic index rankings and scores to the 2020 'World Happiness Index' which ranks how citizens of 156 countries perceive themselves, evaluating their own lives; and the list of 30 ranks factors on why people may be happy or not. As you will note Canada ranks #11 with a score of 7.232 in the happiness index and #12 out of the top 20 countries with a score of 9.0 in the list of 30. By comparison America ranks # 18 with a score of 6.94 in the happiness index and # 20 with a score of 14.53; and Norway ranks #5 with a score of 7.48 in the happiness index and # 1 in the list of 30.

Rankings & Scores

The Atlantic's David Frum (a fellow Canadian) in response to the question on 'America's Next Chapter' - "Is there a risk to Canada of the development of a populist movement?; responded "Canada should be studied why, out of all the major Western Countries from 2002 to 2020, Canada has been immune to the development of authoritarianism."  Having studied and written about this stuff for over a decade, and in analyzing the statistics in the 30 indexes, I can assert Canada is not immune to the development of authoritarianism.

In response to the fundamental question what makes people happy, my analysis of the list of 30 indexes and research that the Faas Foundation has conducted with the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence and Mental Health America, workers are happy when the following conditions exists in their organizations. 

• TRUST
• A sense of STABILITY & SECURITY
• A sense of PURPOSE
• A sense of EFFICACY
• The ability to SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER

This week the 51st World Economic Forum's annual meeting is being held on the theme "The Great Reset" representing a commitment by key governmental and business leaders to jointly and urgently build the foundations of the global economic and social system for a more fair, sustainable and resilient future. I urge these leaders to study the top 20 happiest countries to understand, beyond the superficial and in some detail why people are happy or not.

SOURCE The Faas Foundation