Why Happiness at Work Starts with the System, Not the Individual with Jennifer Moss

If a factory machine breaks, leadership responds within hours. 

If a system glitch halts production, it’s triaged immediately.

But when a team’s morale is tanking, the response takes 6–12 months—if it comes at all. 

How did we get to a point where our physical assets get more respect than our human ones? We've spent years treating burnout like a solo thing to fix when it’s actually an organizational problem.

In this episode of the Happiness Squad Podcast, Ashish Kothari and Jennifer Moss tackle this problem head on, and discuss what it truly takes to build happy, healthy organizations.

Jennifer Moss is an award-winning journalist, international speaker, and workplace culture strategist. She co-founded Plasticity Labs and is the author of Why Are We Here?, and The Burnout Epidemic (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021), which was named one of the 10 Best New Management Books by Thinkers50 and shortlisted for the 2021 OWL Literary Award. A regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Forbes, and Fortune, she’s renowned for reframing burnout as an organizational rather than individual issue.

In the conversation, Ashish and Jennifer unpack the evolution of happiness at work, from early “choose happiness” mantras to a more nuanced understanding of systemic well-being.

Things you will also learn from the episode:

• Rethinking the phrase “Happiness is a Choice”

• How both individual practices and organizational design influence happiness

• The problem of blaming individuals for burnout instead of fixing workplace environments

• Understanding the concept of the “continuum of well-being”

• The Role of AI in Happiness and the Future of Work

Stop waiting for the next annual survey. Start investing like your people matter, because they do.

Resources: ✅

• Jennifer Moss’ website: http://www.jennifer-moss.com/ 

• Burnout Is About Your Workplace, Not Your People (article by Jennifer Moss): https://www.jennifer-moss.com/writing/burnout-is-about-your-workplace-not-your-people 

• Mercer Trends study: https://www.mercer.com/en-ca/insights/people-strategy/future-of-work/four-day-workweek-the-cure-for-burnout/#:~:text=If%20you%20feel%20exhausted%2C%20you,industries%2C%20making%20work%20more%20intense. 

• Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory Of Motivation-Hygiene: https://www.simplypsychology.org/herzbergs-two-factor-theory.html 

• World Happiness Report: The Lost Wallets Experiment: https://worldhappiness.report/news/world-happiness-report-2025-people-are-much-kinder-than-we-expect-research-shows/ 

Books: ✅

• The Burnout Epidemic by Jennifer Moss: https://a.co/d/bVuMU9G 

• Why Are We Here?: Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants by Jennifer Moss: https://a.co/d/1spyHXX 

• Unlocking Happiness at Work: How a Data-driven Happiness Strategy Fuels Purpose, Passion and Performance: https://a.co/d/j57U6X5 

• Hardwired for Happiness by Ashish Kothari: https://a.co/d/hsJLwcv