This isn’t just good news. This is stupendous news.

Oh yes. Oh yes, yes yes. It’s proper science and all that too:

Economists at the University of Warwick have found happiness increases productivity by around 12%.

Andrew Oswald, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi carried out a number of experiments to test the idea that happy employees work harder…

To create happiness under lab conditions, researchers employed some mild emotional manipulation. Some of the subjects, chosen at random, were shown a clip of stand-up comedian Bill Bailey or were given free fruit and chocolate. A control sample watched a placebo video and were given nothing…

Researchers found watching the comedy or eating the chocolate improved performance in the subsequent productivity task…

So it doens’t hurt to be nice to your employees. Or, failing that, just give them chocolates and Bill Bailey DVDs.