Elisa and Anna, why did you decide to join the International Week of Happiness at Work?
We joined the International Week of Happiness at Work because it is a wonderful and impactful global event, initiated by Happy Office and now led by The Woohoo Partnership. It feels great to feel part of a global network and be able to show that there are companies in any part of the world, regardless of sectors, industries, or dimensions that are already actively working putting the happiness of the employees at the core of their strategy. It is a wonderful opportunity to spread the culture of Happiness at Work around the world and to make the incredible work that all the partners are doing visible.
What exactly do you aim for in Italy this week?
The aim of organizing this week in Italy is to make people understand that Happiness at Work is not a joke, it is something very concrete, that anyone can build in their company. Inspire them through the stories of Italian and international companies that are focusing on this topic, showing them that is possible and it has huge results on profitability. A lot of managers in Italy think that Happiness at Work is something for big international corporations or young companies in tech, through the stories of our speakers we try to demonstrate that it is not the reality. Everyone can invest in Happiness at Work and have great results. That’s why, every year we try to have a wide range of speakers, telling stories and projects of companies in different sectors, industries, dimensions. We strongly believe that Happiness is possible everywhere with a strong commitment to people.
What are you going to organize in 2020?
This year the Italian edition will be completely online, not only because of Covid-19 it is difficult to organize real-live events, but because we want to have the widest impact possible and reach people coming from all parts of Italy.
We will organize two Panel discussions: the first one on Monday to open the week with five Italian Happy companies that will present their best practices, they have been selected as our Italian Champions of Happiness at Work: they ar are strongly committed to building a happy and safe environment for the people they have, and the second one on Friday it will be the big closing of this edition with an International Panel Discussion with 10 Woohoo Partners that will discuss how it is possible to be a happy company in every part of the world.
You have been a part of the International Week of Happiness at Work for a couple of years now. What was the impact of what you did last year?
Last year we did five events in five different companies, we had more than 200 participants. The week was published in many newspapers and websites.
Each event was divided into two parts: the first part was a small introduction of the topic, followed by the testimony of the company that was hosting the event, in the second part the participants had to take actions, they will be divided into groups and each group had to develop a Happy Project for a company. The best thing? Some of these projects born from collective intelligence have been implemented in some companies.
