Bringing some much needed hard science to the topic of wellbeing at work.
Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2025.
Jan-Emmanuel is co-founder of the World Wellbeing Movement.
George received Best Paper Award, Oxford Wellbeing Conference, 2022.
In their 2025 book, Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward examine the vital connection between work and happiness. Using extensive data, including the world’s largest employee wellbeing dataset, they explore how workplace satisfaction varies across jobs and industries. They offer a fresh, data-driven perspective to definitions of workplace wellbeing and their research demonstrates that improving wellbeing can boost productivity, aid in talent retention and recruitment, and ultimately improve financial performance.
Jan-Emmanuel is a professor of economics at Saïd Business School and director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. He has been a visiting professor at INSEAD and an assistant professor at UCL. His research, published in top academic journals, was included among “The Management Ideas That Mattered Most” by Harvard Business Review. George is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford. He gained his master’s and PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters: The Science Behind Employee Happiness and Organizational Performance (2025). Co-authors: The Origins of Happiness: The Science of Well-Being over the Life Course(2018); Can We Be happier: Evidence and Ethics (2020); Wellbeing: Science and Policy (2023). Jan-Emmanuel is an editor of the World Happiness Report and George has published widely on the topic of human wellbeing in leading academic journals.
“Addressing one of the most important barriers to organisational and individual success.”
Stuart Crainer & Des Dearlove, Thinkers50
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