Happiness charity seeks boss

Wanted: director to bring happiness to the world. Must have a vision of society in which people are motivated by more than just money. Salary: £80,000. This year marks the launch of the Movement For Happiness, an organisation that aims not only to increase the sum of human happiness but also to lower the amount of misery as well (and all that with a staff of three).

The movement is the creation of two academics and a policy expert who have become convinced that increases in material wealth in the West have failed to deliver a happier society. They are Lord Layard, a founder director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, who became known as the Government’s “happiness czar” for his role in making his agenda part of government policy; Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College; and Geoff Mulgan, former head of policy at 10 Downing Street. “We hope it will become a mass movement, extending far beyond our borders, with members who are committed to trying to produce more happiness in all spheres of life,” said Lord Layard.



In an advertisement for the post of director (who will “need to have proven leadership ability”) the founders said: “We hope this movement will help to shift our culture away from selfish materialism towards more rewarding forms of social engagement.” In the meantime, however, there is the selfishly materialistic question of how much to pay the director. Remuneration, and its relationship to happiness, is of great interest to Lord Layard, who has discussed before how bigger salaries do not necessarily lead to greater contentment. Evidence from the United States, he said, had shown that beyond £60,000, increases in salary do not lead to significantly greater increases in happiness.

On that basis, any director they recruit should be more than happy with what is on offer. “We have got to be able to pay a proper salary,” said Lord Layard. “We would not be ruling out £80,000 for the right person. They would have to believe in the message — to change the culture away from feeling that your main job in life is what you can get, to what you can contribute — and have some sort of imaginative flair as well as organisational ability.”