Carla Furtado: “Our purpose is enabling companies to become places where life flourishes”

Leaders League: What is Instituto Feliciência and what is its purpose? Can you tell us about the organization's foundation and history?

Carla Furtado: Instituto Feliciência is completing its seventh operational year in 2022. Throughout its history it has become one of the main suppliers in the corporate education field, with activities that are 100% based on science. As a learning institute, it works in the fields of well-being/mental health, sustainability/ESG, and leadership.

In 2021 alone, we promoted 120 initiatives, including open certifications, in-company courses, and lectures. Last year we provided education solutions to the following companies: ABRH, AGU, Abrapp, Ambev, Aniger, Boehringer, Cenibra, Embraer, Exto, Fecomércio, Fiergs, Firjan, Fundação Educacional Machado de Assis, Grupo TreinaRio, Tivit, Hoteis Hilton, Happymed, Hospital Albert Einstein, HSM, LIDE, Metlife, MPT, Nemak, Odontoprev, Office Connection, Organon, Petrobrás, Plastipak, PPG, Qualiáudio, Random, SESC, Sescoop, Sesi, Sebrae, Sicoob, Tag, Tratho, TRE, TIM, TRT, Unimed, Uol Edtech, Vale and Veolia. 

As an official member of the SDG Academy - Community of Practice, the main educational initiative of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), affiliated with the United Nations, we actively participate in a network of global education organizations dedicated to sustainable development.

Instead of speaking about happiness at the workplace, let’s speak about employee happiness in general

Our purpose is enabling companies to become places where life flourishes - not languishes - by helping them align their commitments and actions with a safe and healthy environment for professionals in an equally safe and healthy environment for society.

You recently published research on the relationship between employee happiness and levels of engagement at work. What were your main findings?

By correlating personal and social conditions of happiness and work engagement, we confirmed the hypothesis that people with better conditions inside and outside of their companies display greater professional engagement. What is very relevant here is that the findings urge organizations to look into employee well-being in a comprehensive manner, both inside and outside of company walls. We have defended that a new paradigm should be established: instead of speaking about happiness at the workplace, let’s speak about employee happiness in general. The world has become considerably more complex and we still see a Cartesian mindset being used to face challenges, including those linked to mental health and well-being.

Has the official listing of burnout as a labor disease renewed discussions regarding employee exhaustion in the legal and financial markets? How do you assess the pandemic’s impacts on the well-being of these professionals? Was there a notable rise in burnout cases during this period?

According to the International Stress Management Association (ISMA-BR), the Burnout Syndrome impacts approximately 32% of Brazilian workers on some level. To get an idea of the disease’s impact, the medical leave for a severe diagnosis is around 100 days. Its introduction into the ICD-11 as a work-related phenomenon urges organizations to address the infirmity in the same manner as labor accidents: with policies and programs for prevention, compulsory notification, and treatment of the causal factors.

Prior to the pandemic, the incidence of depression in Brazil was already above the global average at 5.8% versus 4.4% (WHO, 2017). Even before SARS-CoV-2, the country was already at the top of the anxiety disorders ranking, with 9.3% of the population affected (WHO, 2017). Regarding the mental health of formal workers, in 2018 depression emerged as the second cause of sick pay (30.67%), followed by anxiety disorders (17.9%) and only faring behind labor accidents (INSS, 2019).

Burnout syndrome impacts approximately 32% of Brazilian workers on some level

The Covid-19 pandemic aggravated this scenario: in 2020, there was a 20.6% rise compared to 2019 in the granting of sick pay and disability retirement pensions due to mental disorders (INSS, 2021). A multicentric study corroborates that, among 11 countries assessed during the pandemic, Brazilian residents presented the highest incidence of anxiety and depression (Ding at al, 2021).

The Superior Labor Court’s Safe Job Program points out the following as causes for the rise of mental disorders in the workplace: labor stress, exhaustive shift hours, abusive targets, moral harassment, harassment from direct managers, among others. Contributing factors were the unplanned challenges of remote working and the sanitary risks which on-site workers remained exposed to (TST, 2021).

Instituto Feliciência has collaborated with some of Brazil’s leading banks. How can we create a more sustainable working culture for employees in sectors that traditionally require long office hours

First of all, by considering the mental health of professionals as a primordial strategic element for human, social, and business sustainability, to be included within the scope of risk management. To understand the urgency of this matter, a company’s board only needs to reflect on how dependent it is of its staff and the degree to which work impacts its professionals. These are basic issues in the ESG journey.

Among 11 countries assessed during the pandemic, Brazilian residents presented the highest incidence of anxiety and depression  (Ding at al, 2021)

From a tactical-operational perspective, it is recommended that mental health promotion and prevention within corporations be fully removed from the realm of self-care. Meditation, access to gyms, and birthdays off, although positive, are not enough to create an integrated effort if the company’s culture, dynamics and power relations are potentially afflicting. Additionally, excessive workloads are one of the risk factors for burnout and this is not solved by periods of isolated decompression.

Lastly, a warning: before entrusting managers with the responsibility of preventing mental health issues within their teams, be reminded that they are exposed to burnout risks as well. Demanding that managers are empathetic and ensure the psychological safety of their employees won’t be enough if these are not structural values within the organization.

What new initiatives can we expect from Instituto Feliciência over the next 12 months?

In March we'll launch the book "Feliciência: Happiness and Work in the Age of Complexity", under the Actual brand of Portuguese publisher Almedina. This is our way of leveraging more power and greater reach to what we have been producing in terms of knowledge and critical studies in the field.

In the field of corporate education, we will invest strongly in ESG, with a special focus on the social and human sustainability pillars. We have also just released FeliciData, a spin-off dedicated to research in the corporate environment. With this, we began providing services to organizations seeking scientific rigor to diagnose their employees’ mental health, well-being, and happiness. We work with scientifically validated instruments and with the same precepts adopted in our academic research—all of which is suited for business intelligence and to support organizations that have a data-first mindset. 

By: Danilo Motta