Better

We are in the midst of a wellbeing revolution: natural foods, alternative therapies, meditation and more. Some enlightened businesses – stretched to the limit with stress and competing for the best talent – have taken wellbeing on board. What started as a few HR reforms at companies like Google is now changing our view of what a business is, and what it is for.

Business used to labour under the mistaken idea that companies are like mechanisms, and it is all about financial results. But in the last few decades an alternative worldview moved in from the innovative fringes, that sees business fundamentally as a living human system. Wellbeing is 80 per cent social. That’s why this book calls it wellbeeing. Just like bees, we are a social species. We need fellowship and belonging, a stimulating environment and a sense of purpose.

This book explores how that ‘better’ idea took hold first in workplaces with natural, human-centred architecture and processes, flexible working, and mindfulness classes. And it looks at the evidence that these changes aren’t just nice, they produce better work. To reflect this new business culture, Better is a new kind of business book: full of humanity, insight, provocation, enlightening facts and intriguing images.