
Artificial intelligence (AI) and sensor technologies that can measure workforce happiness could become a trend among businesses as they seek ways to increase happiness among their employees, improving business productivity and profits, says Japan-based technology firm Hitachi.
"There is a global trend among businesses, cities and nations to focus more on people's happiness than economic growth, looking beyond safety and physiological issues," said Kazuo Yano, head of the happiness project for future investment division of Hitachi. He was speaking at the Hitachi Social Innovation Forum in Bangkok yesterday.
He cited the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the government values citizen happiness and has set up a Ministry of Happiness that gauges the impact of every law on people's happiness.
Mr Yano, an AI expert, said organisations in the future will focus more on the sustainable happiness of workforces, which includes esteem, self-actualisation and transcendence.
He said happiness is a biochemical reaction in the human body that can be reflected via blood vessels and pressure as well as respiration and muscles.
A simple way to measure happiness is to examine muscle relaxation and contraction, said Mr Yano. Information can be gained by tracking people's physical motions and movement via wearable devices the company developed, he said.
Mr Yano said over the past 14 years he has used the wristbands to measure his own happiness and expanded the experiments to other groups in different cultures and countries.
According to him, flexibility of physical motion has a correlation with happiness.
Happiness can be measured via Hitachi's Happiness Planet mobile app on smartphones synced with wearable devices, said Mr Yano. The system can also recommend ways to improve happiness to users, such as by interacting more with people to make others happy.
He said sustainable happiness of people is "psychological capital", which can enhance business profits, health and relationships.
Under the experiments on the app, which is in the beta stage, the psychological capital of workers rose by 33% and profits climbed by 10%, said Mr Yano. Sales per hour increased by 34% at call centres and sales at stores went up by 15%. Testing has been carried out with 83 organisations and 4,300 people.
Hitachi plans to launch solutions in Japan, then other counties.