The Case for Flourishing: The Smartest $12 Trillion Business Move You’re Not Making with Ashish Kothari

Ashish Kothari:

Hi, dear friends. Welcome to a special podcast episode. This one is all about work well-being, and flourishing—a core part of what I've dedicated the second half of my life to. In this episode, I want to share why investing in flourishing makes business sense, and how you can integrate this science into the way you work, live, and lead others—so you can unlock the full potential of yourself, your teams, and your organizations.

What Is Flourishing?

So let’s first start with talking a little bit about why flourishing actually matters by itself for us as humans. Let’s first describe what flourishing means.

Flourishing, for me, is living a life that has meaning—in relationships, in community with others—constantly learning and growing as individuals, personally and professionally.

Being able to take care of our health—physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally—and truly enjoying the experience, whether it is good or bad, in the day-to-day of life, and operating with a high state of resilience.

Why Flourishing Matters

So let’s think about why this matters. Why does it matter? Why does flourishing matter?

Well, friends, most of us spend close to 90,000 hours in our lifetime at work. 90,000 hours. That’s approximately a third of our lives. Between 20 to 60, five days a week, the majority of our waking hours are spent at work. And if you are like so many who are in high-stress, always-on roles—even when you’re home, you’re actually thinking about work.

So friends, if you are not flourishing at work—or worse, you are suffering at work—how can you flourish or be happy in life? How can you do well in life?

We don’t live in a severance world. We carry the joy as well as the sorrows, the stress, the frustration, the anxiety from work into our homes.

I’ve spoken to 10,000-plus people, and for most people, when I share this, they step back. And so I want to create a little bit of a step-back moment for us, our listeners here on this podcast.

Self-Assessment: Are You Flourishing?

If you are sitting down, I want you to close your eyes and reflect on these five questions I’m about to ask you—to take your own inventory.

If you are driving or running or walking, just listen to these questions, reflect on them, but then play this podcast back when you’re sitting down to do this reflection. Because I want you to think about these questions not just from your head, but from your heart and from your body.

I want you to think about a scale from one to five. One is low. Five is high.

Five Questions for Self-Reflection

Does your work have meaning for you, or is it just a way to earn a paycheck? If it is just a way to earn a paycheck, rate yourself as one. If your work has meaning and significance for you, rate it as a five—or somewhere in the middle.

Do you feel energized by your work, excited to show up Monday mornings, or do you start counting down your days and hours waiting for Friday evening to arrive? If you start counting down your hours to Friday, rate it as one. If you are excited and you leave your work with more energy than when you started the day, rate it as a five.

Are you learning, growing, and developing—both personally and professionally—or do you feel stuck, stagnant, and harboring a dull ache that you can be so much more than that? If you feel stuck or stagnant, rate yourself a one. If you’re constantly learning and growing, rate yourself a five—or somewhere in the middle.

Do you feel seen, supported, and valued at work, or do you feel invisible and expendable? If you feel invisible or expendable, rate yourself a one. If you feel valued and seen, and you feel like you belong, rate yourself a five.

Does your calendar look like a game of meeting bingo—constantly on, running from back-to-back meetings? Or are you working at your cognitive best with time for deep work on priorities that really matter, having breaks throughout the day to make sure that you recharge your energy, just like you recharge your phone, and truly working in neuro-friendly ways? If your calendar looks like meeting bingo, rate yourself a one. If it’s carefully constructed with breaks and deep work, rate yourself a five.

Now, take an average of this—between one to five—and calculate your score.

We’re Operating at Half Potential

When I’ve asked individuals and leaders to do this, on average people report a score between two and three. Think about that difference.

We are operating at 50% of the full potential of what’s possible. And it’s not somebody else who’s to blame. It’s not somebody else who’s responsible.

As leaders, as individuals, we have the power to change our experience at work. We have to take responsibility. And I’m gonna give you a set of tips and tricks—and the research in this field from so many individuals whose work you can harness—to be an agent of change, be an agent of flourishing.

Now look, my invitation and my call to action for you to do this is not just one from a humanitarian or a personal selfish point of view. There’s a strong business case for investing in flourishing too.

The Economic Case for Flourishing

Let me give you some statistics and data that should convince you and help you make the case behind this to your organizations.

In: 2025

The numbers ranged from $4 to $12 trillion approximately in economic value.

The biggest sources of losses come from presenteeism and productivity—close to $9 billion. Absenteeism and attrition together account for about $1.5 trillion. Retention and attraction account for $900 billion.

So we lose $12 trillion of value on the upper end, and close to $4 trillion of value on the lower end.

They further quantified this for what it means. If you are in a high-income country like the U.S., and let’s say you’re in a digital industry—let’s say you do software as a service. If the average annual pay is about $80,000, the total economic value lost per employee is about $14,000 to $44,000.

Think about that, friends. That’s close to 20% to 50% of value from your human capital that you are leaving on the table.

That’s massive. That’s something that every person should take to their leadership team—or, if you’re a leader, should look into that.

Will you accept your physical assets running at that level of efficiency? Imagine if your data centers, your fleets, your machines, your equipment ran at 12% to 50% of their potential. Would you accept that?

So then why are we willing to accept that level of misuse, un-utilization, of our people, our assets? We spend more on people than machines, dear friends. If you are in a manufacturing industry like automotive, let’s say in the U.S., the average annual pay is about $40,000. The value we leave on the table is $7,000 to $22,000 again in the same report.

Don’t Just Minimize Loss—Maximize Gains

There is real economic value behind this.

So now let’s not just look at losses, because if we just talk about loss in the context of flourishing, we’re leaving the other side of the equation—which is the gains.

The work done at Michigan Ross at the Center of Positive Organizational Scholarship—by Jane Dutton, Kim Cameron, Bob Quinn, who are the founders of this field—over the last 20-plus years, they have convened over a thousand researchers on this topic.

Jane talks about the “zone of potential”—this triangle, which is the zone of potential. Kim talks about “positive deviance”—how can organizations not just close the gaps but achieve net positive results from the norm?

s, London Business School, in: 2009

For anybody who’s at the board, or if you’re a leader who wants to take this to the board: investing in employee satisfaction and employee work well-being is not just a humanitarian case—it is your fiduciary responsibility.

The Evidence Is Mounting

The most recent work that I’ve also really been excited about is the work done by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve at Oxford. Jan-Emmanuel wrote a book called Why Work Wellbeing Matters. He has an amazing TEDx talk. You should listen to it.

He articulates four key drivers through which he measures work well-being: purpose, happiness, the presence or absence of stress daily, and satisfaction. What he found was only 20% of people are thriving at work.

And—oh, by the way—when you invest in a portfolio of companies, which is the experiment they ran with the top 100 work well-being companies, collected using the data from Indeed, what they find is those companies outperformed every other index in the next two and a half years.

Work well-being is positively correlated with profitability, with return on assets, and shareholder returns. The simulation—similar to what Alex had done earlier—proved that there is a real causation here.

So friends, the business case for investing in flourishing has never been clearer. In fact, it is time we start to take it seriously.

It’s Time to Wake Up

You know, today when I ask people, “Do you believe the Earth is round?” They look at me like I’ve got horns growing out of my head. But today, 1% of people still believe Earth is flat. Five hundred years ago, almost half the world would not sail off because they were afraid of falling off the Earth because they thought it was flat.

Fifty years ago, the concept of climate change—even to me—was quite artificial. “What do you mean about climate change and the Earth is warming?” Today, 70% of people believe that. 30% still deny it. But 70% believe.

And I’m not talking about whether it is real, whether we caused it, whether it’s natural or not. I’m just talking purely from a science lens: Is our Earth getting warmer? Are our oceans getting warmer?

Friends, the business case for flourishing is that clear. It’s a significant lever left untapped—for us to unlock the full potential of our individuals and our organizations.

And oh, by the way, the only choice I suggest to you is the following: Are you going to be a leader and really use this and pursue flourishing as a strategy to gain a competitive edge? Or are you going to be a laggard and do it to catch up?

Because this change is coming. The new generation is demanding this. They will not work under those conditions for long. The governments are mandating it. More and more lawsuits around psychological safety, poor work well-being, are being filed—and won.

So, friends, the leading organizations are already implementing it. They’re not sitting on the sidelines.

That’s the real choice that you have: Do you want to be one of the first movers and join in the fray and pursue flourishing as a strategy—or be left behind?

Now, if you’re listening, I want to also paint a picture about how we got here.

Because many companies today will say, “Yes, we are doing enough on this. We are doing wellness things. We have meditation classes. We give Headspace and Calm. We have gym memberships. We have employee benefits. We have employee assistance programs. When people are struggling, we give them the resources. They have therapists. We have mental health days. We have doctors on staff.”

And I hear these all the time: “Yes, we are doing enough. We are doing a lot. Look at our spending—it’s actually gone up.”

The Wellness Illusion

Friends, let me help you step back and look at those.

If you think about the continuum around well-being, most organizations are focused on two ends of the spectrum.

On one end, we are actually giving a bunch of wellness interventions to the individual. We’re putting the whole burden on individuals.

Friends, if you look at the data on those who use gym memberships versus not, the people who use gym memberships are the ones who went to the gym in the first place. Very few people who wouldn’t have otherwise gone to the gym sign up for the gym memberships you give.

Same goes for meditation. Those who meditate, meditate. They don’t need Headspace and Calm. If they need it, they can actually get it themselves.

What they need is for you to fix work.

In fact, an Oxford paper in: 2024

Apply the Same Rigor

If you are a CFO, or if you’re a leader, think about the level of rigor you put on every investment—whether it is in the manufacturing plant, investing in new capacity, a fleet, a data center, or a marketing campaign.

Why don’t you apply the same rigor on the return on investment from your well-being investments?

Well, the reason is because we think about it as a “split the pie” strategy. As Alex says, we should just do it, even if I can’t measure it. Why?

We can measure the impact of work well-being. Give the same level of rigor to it.

We’re Treating Symptoms, Not Causes

Second, a lot of these interventions are also on the other end of the spectrum. They come in the form of employee assistance programs—access to therapists, mental health days, sick days, etc.

Friends, I know this is gonna sound extreme, but I feel that’s a little bit like giving people the resources to heal themselves after we’ve broken them.

Giving them resources after we break them? That’s great—but that’s not enough.

We can’t wash our hands off this.

Because if you look at, again, the McKinsey World Health Institute research, 97% of the drivers behind burnout are actually at the job, team, organization level—not at the individual level.

The same goes for well-being.

Seventy-two percent of the demands and enablers behind holistic health are at the job, team, and organization level—not the individual. So if all of your investments are on burnout prevention, anxiety, and depression—giving individuals the resources—or all of them are on the health side, and you’re missing work, you are leaving the majority of the opportunity behind. You’re also not exercising your responsibility.

We have to fix work—from one of immense human suffering to one of human flourishing.

Now, I am not exaggerating this point, dear friends. The Indeed report shows that only 20% of people are thriving at work. Twenty percent. One in five. Would you let your physical assets run at that level of efficiency? One in five is doing well, the rest are somewhere in the middle.

Sixty percent of people report experiencing stress daily. Globally, 22% of people are burned out—16% in the U.S.—and this is using the medical definition of burnout: I feel chronically stressed. I am feeling a high level of cynicism and distance from my job because it can’t change. I am physically and cognitively not able to do my best work.

Only 15% of frontline workers find meaning at work. The level of hopelessness is rising. This is massive human suffering.

You Can’t Meditate Your Way Out of a Toxic Workplace

This is why just doing work at the individual level—whether meditation, gratitude, or giving people resources—is not enough.

With 70% of the factors being about work, this is the equivalent of telling somebody in a toxic relationship that kindness, meditation, and gratitude will save the day. If you go home every day and have a spouse that abuses you physically or mentally—how is this not mental abuse when only 20% of people are thriving and 60% experience stress daily at work?

How is that not a form of mental and emotional abuse? Why are we okay with that? Why are we okay with accentuating that in our workplaces?

You Have the Power to Lead Change

Now look, I’m not asking you to take pitchforks and go after leadership. We are all leaders. There are a lot of resources we can access.

I'm asking you to be an agent of change in the teams you lead—with the people around you. Because that is the beauty of this work. Almost 70% to 80% of this work, as a leader of a function, location, or team, you and your team can address. And I'm going to share some of those with you.

1. Treat Flourishing as Strategy—Not a Perk

Let’s talk about those. What can I do?

The first and biggest one, friends, is you have to think about flourishing as a strategy—not as a benefit. We have to think about flourishing not as a check-the-box, nice-to-do thing when we make money once or twice a year, but as a long-term strategy.

What does that mean?

Number one: We need to have flourishing be a measure we hold our leaders to—just like we hold them to performance. We need to tie incentives to it. We need to build systems and capabilities that allow us to scale flourishing as a capability, as a strategy across the organization—not just leave it for the top team leaders.

Every person is a leader. Our issue is not just the top. Our issue is the middle. We never train people and help them implement these changes at work. We have to think about this as a strategy.

When we think about this as a strategy, we also have to take a long-term view. When we invest in upgrading our systems—whether it’s implementing SAP, a new HRIS system, or a digital strategy—do we think of that as a three- or six-month ROI? No. You think about it as a multi-year, three-to-four-plus-year strategy.

We’ve got to think about flourishing on that horizon too. We have to stop this short-term thinking: “Tell me in three months what I got.” But we should also hold hard: If we think it's a four-year strategy, I better see the results.

With the research that Alex has done, Jan‑Emmanuel has done, and we’ve done at Happiness Squad and at McKinsey, the case is there. We need to measure all the places where human energy is lost—and help those leaders close those gaps.

2. Measure What Actually Matters

Friends, if you care about work well-being, if you fundamentally buy into flourishing and work well-being as something worth your energy—then measure it.

Stop measuring engagement. We've been measuring engagement for 15 years. We do it once a year. Why are we still stuck at 30% engagement levels? If it was working, why have we not moved the needle?

Engagement scores have just become check-the-box exercises. They only measure the tip of the iceberg.

If you really want to measure flourishing, measure the ingredients of flourishing:

What percentage find meaning at work?

What percentage are energized by work and happy at work?

What percentage are learning and growing and operating with a high degree of adaptability?

What percentage feel safe, seen, and trust their leaders?

What percentage are working in ways that allow them to be at their best—rather than constantly stressed and feeling under the gun?

Also measure the results: the losses associated with poor well-being.

At Happiness Squad, we built a diagnostic that allows you to quantify human capital losses in the same way you measure physical capital losses.

We measure availability losses—driven by ingredients like attrition and absenteeism.

We measure performance losses at the individual and team level: the percentage that finds meaning, those who experience stress, those who work back-to-back meetings and multitask, those who feel psychologically safe and trusted.

We measure quality losses—decision-making quality, and also the percentage of errors due to multitasking or not having enough time.

We measure those losses at a team level and can roll them up at a functional level—because we fundamentally believe we need to measure those losses if we want to fix them.

We have to make it real for leaders. We have to hold them accountable. But we also have to give them the insights they need to make a difference.

3. Listen Continuously. Act Fast.

Friends, I want you to think about how often you collect your data.

If you run a plant or are in asset-heavy industries, how often do you look at data for your fleet utilization, retail store performance, or data center uptime? Your marketing campaigns?

When it comes to physical assets and investments, we look at data every day.

How often—and how fast—do you expect people to take action?

When I ask this to most CEOs, they say, “24 to 48 hours.” If something’s broken in our physical infrastructure, we want to get it fixed. We want someone to take action.

So why is it, friends, that when it comes to our physical assets, we look at data daily—but when it comes to our human assets, we look at it once a year? Maybe every six months?

Why do we expect action within 48 hours for machines, but let six, nine, even twelve months go by between employee feedback and meaningful change?

I was talking to an HR leader who told me their lowest engagement score was: “This company doesn’t take action. My feedback isn’t valued.”

And yet—we keep running the same process.

4. Ditch One-Size-Fits-All

One reason for this is the current way we do this work. We apply one-size-fits-all, top-down interventions—based on data we interpret at the center. That’s quite different from how we do physical asset optimization.

The person running that machine, that line, that plant, that fleet, that location is the one who takes action—based on what’s needed. Not top-down.

But if we fundamentally believe this is a benefit, not something line leaders care about, then of course we can only do one or two things at the center. Of course there’s a lag between design and rollout.

That’s why our HR business partners can’t do this on their own.

If we want a bottom-up system of continuous listening—where leaders and teams choose the right intervention together—we have to throw out our existing playbook and build a new human operating system.

5. Addressing the Full System

Last but not the least, you need to address the full system based on the losses you’re seeing.

You have to drive interventions at the individual level. You have to drive interventions at the job and team level—which includes upskilling the middle—and you have to address things at the organizational level.

Individual-Level Interventions

Let me share some of the models and work that have been done here that you can use to make these changes if you so want.

At the individual level, instead of offering people meditation, gym memberships, or lectures by experts, enroll them into programs that are cohort-based—journeys that span 3, 6, or 12 months. These should be done in intact teams where they use the science of happiness to build more adaptability and resilience.

These skills help people be happier, healthier, and find more love and meaning so they can be at their best—not just at work, but in life. We can train this. We can use micro-practices that are done at work, not outside of work. We integrate them into team rituals. We do this as teams. That increases connection. It shows: I matter. My happiness matters. My well-being matters.

We’ve run these programs with six different client teams, and in every one of them, within four months, over 40% reported—on a scale of one to five—a four to five level of improvement in stress, hope, and optimism.

This is possible. We just have to do it differently. Help people practice at work. Put them in peer groups and cohorts that support them. Keep them in practice. Make these practices small. Make them fit into busy lives.

The Sunflower Model that I write about in Hardwired for Happiness, and that our Rewire course is built around, is one good resource. So is the work of many others in this field:

Tal Ben-Shahar, author of several books on happiness

Shauna Shapiro, who’s done amazing work in mindfulness and neuroscience

Emma Seppälä, who’ll be a guest on our podcast soon

Martin Seligman, the OG of positive psychology

If you want ready, off-the-shelf modules to run with your team, come find us at Happiness Squad. Check out our Rewire program—we’d be happy to make it available to you.

Team and Job-Level Interventions

Let’s now step into the team and job level. These account for almost 60% of well-being and close to 80–85% of burnout.

Our PEARL Model is a powerful and integrated model built around this. The inspiration came from the sea. Pearls are formed when oysters transform daily irritants—like sand particles—into something precious.

The PEARL skills help any manager transform daily irritants—conflicts with bosses, colleagues, suppliers, customers, or external shocks—into massive sources of growth and value.

The five elements of PEARL are the same ones I asked you to assess earlier. We built our Human Potential Index model around these. There’s extensive research integrated into this framework.

P – Purpose

Doing work that matters. Connecting what people do every day to a sense of meaning.

This draws from the work of Jane Dutton and Amy Wrzesniewski on job crafting. Their tool is publicly available and can be integrated with your team. It helps you have meaningful conversations around how to craft your jobs across three levels: task, relationship, and cognitive—how people think about the impact of their work.

Also explore the work of Raj Sisodia in the field of conscious capitalism, which provides valuable tools to support this effort.

E – Energy

Does the work we find energize us? Energy comes from how we communicate, appreciate, and create compassionate workplaces. It’s about helping those who suffer find relief. It’s also about teaching teams to handle conflict better, focusing on inquiry instead of advocacy. That way, we analyze problems down to the fears and needs, rather than getting stuck in positions.

Here are some key sources:

Monica Worline and Jane Dutton – Awakening Compassion at Work

Barbara Fredrickson – on positive emotions and gratitude

Julien Mirivel – on positive communication (he has a masterclass and a book; we had him on our podcast)

Kim Cameron – we also had her on positive energizers and heliotropic effects

Crucial Conversations and Harvard/McKinsey research – on better conflict, advocacy, and inquiry

You don’t need a CEO-level change to act on these. Any leader or team can start using them today.

A – Adaptability and Awareness

Adaptability was a major area of my research at McKinsey.

We’ve written a paper on the adaptability paradox, which covers learning mindsets versus anti-learning mindsets. Other resources include:

The Conscious Leadership Group – shifting from reactive to creative responses

Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin – work on navigating complexity

Gallup’s StrengthsFinder – on growing by leveraging strengths

These are all resources you can access. You don’t have to execute everything. Start by identifying the gaps in your organization and apply what fits.

R – Relationships

This is about creating environments of trust, inclusion, and psychological safety.

Key resources:

Amy Edmondson – psychological safety

Carole Robin and her colleagues at Stanford – authors of Connect, focused on building exceptional relationships. (We had Carole on our podcast too.)

These are practical and powerful tools to help people feel safe, seen, and heard.

L – Lifeforce

Lifeforce is about reducing stress and working in neuro-friendly ways.

Resources here include:

Cal Newport – on deep work and focus

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – on flow

Oxford research – on stress

Johnson & Johnson’s Human Performance Institute – on energy and recovery

The Energy Project – on making stress an ally

We’ll share many of these in our blog so you can access them directly.

A Playbook for Implementation

At Happiness Squad, we’ve built a playbook we call the New Human Operating System. It integrates all of these resources into simple, quarterly or monthly programs that are easy to apply.

We work with leaders in Agile sprints—not just to train, but to transform. We begin with a diagnostic, help you choose the levers that matter most, and then co-create a long-term strategy for flourishing.

Organizational-Level Interventions

You also have to address organizational-level factors that get in the way. These include:

Role conflicts

Work and time pressures

Poor prioritization

Toxic bosses who stay too long while the best people leave

Broken upskilling and capability-building strategies

In this work, I’m delighted to be partnering with Dr. Angela Jackson of Harvard. Her book Win-Win Workplace covers many of these organizational factors. It's a valuable resource.

A Call to Action

So, friends, you now have a whole set of resources available to you.

The business case and rationale for tapping into flourishing as a competitive edge has never been clearer. The evidence is there—$12 trillion in economic value, 2% to 3.5% higher shareholder returns.

But beyond the numbers, we can transform workplaces from environments of suffering into places of human flourishing.

You have more power than you think. Even if you lead a team of six or eight, you can start making changes today that make a difference.

Two Final Quotes

I want to end with two of my favorite quotes.

One is from the spiritual traditions—Kahlil Gibran, who said:

“Work is love made visible.”

Work is not something to be seen as a burden. It can help you grow into your fullest potential.

The second is from Clay Christensen, in his book How Will You Measure Your Life? He called business and leadership “one of the noblest professions.”

But it’s only noble if we use our resources, skills, and obligations as leaders to transform the experience of those we lead—and help them flourish rather than suffer.

Thank you, dear friends, for listening. I hope this invites and inspires you to be a positive agent of change. We’ll keep bringing expert voices to this podcast and make these resources available to you.

Have a blessed day and a wonderful summer.