Managers could achieve a 15% boost in happiness among their employees simply by ensuring they all focus at least once a day on an element of their job the previous day that went well. That’s according to a leading academic studying the nature of happiness.

The University of Hertfordshire’s Professor Richard Wiseman has been heading up a unique mass-participation happiness experiment and believes his findings could help managers to boost employee engagement.

“Thinking about one thing positive from the previous day was the most effective technique we found for boosting happiness,” he said. “The group showed a 15% rise in happiness. And this could easily be used by managers in the workplace, in fact all the techniques could.”

Expressing gratitude and smiling also boost employee happiness, Wiseman found.