Calling all HR & Team Leaders: Help us build the clinical case for prescribing human connection as burnout treatment. WHIS & The Happiness Tour

After one of our early Happiness Tours, a participant with severe burnout held on a little longer than usual at the end. Eyes glistening, she said something we haven’t forgotten.

“I wish my doctor had prescribed this instead.”

Three hours earlier, she’d walked in carrying the weight of severe burnout. And here she was, at the end of a tour, feeling something she hadn’t expected to feel.

That sentence stayed with us. And it became the question we’ve been trying to answer ever since: what if joy, connection, and shared experience weren’t just nice things to offer people, but something we could prescribe? And this resonated deeply with the direction envisioned by World Health Innovation Summit.

Slow Down. Savour. Smile.

Burnout isn’t a stress problem, it’s a human one

Burnout in the Netherlands isn’t getting better, despite efforts from employers who care about their team.

67% of Dutch workers are experiencing burnout symptoms.
82% of Dutch youth report the same.
And 72% of personal interventions eventually boomerang back.

The thing most interventions miss is this: burnout isn’t primarily about physical exhaustion alone. It’s about disconnection. From others, from meaning, from the felt sense that what you do and who you are matters.

And disconnection isn’t something you can think your way out of. It needs to be felt, together, with other people. Giving someone a meditation app when what they need is to feel human again is a bit like prescribing paracetamol for loneliness.

That’s where The Happiness Tour begins.

What is The Happiness Tour?

The Happiness Tour isn’t another workshop where people nod politely while secretly checking Slack. We created wholesome, science-backed experiences that help individuals beat burnout, rediscover joy, and build meaningful connections while giving back to local communities. We offer a choice of locations, activities, languages. And the tours are built on the themes of connection, resilience, meaning, happiness and mindfulness.

To achieve this, we take teams out of their usual environment and into shared moments rooted in local culture, gentle movement, mindfulness, and the science of what makes people well.

Since August 2024, we’ve run 28 tours across 8 locations in the Netherlands, working with organisations including Sensata Technologies and Webster Leiden Campus. We are expanding into United Kingdom and Finland using speech as a biomarker, we’ve measured:

Shifts in participants after just one session,
Increased self-compassion,
A restored sense of agency,
And meaningful reductions in the patterns linked to exhaustion and stress.

Think less “corporate training,” more “collective exhale.”

From a beautiful idea to a global standard

We knew early on that if this was going to become more than a beautiful idea, we needed scale, structure, and scientific muscle.

That’s where The World Health Innovation Summit (WHIS) comes in. Led by Gareth Presch, WHIS is helping shift the world from reactive sick-care to proactive wellbeing. They don’t just talk about the future of healthcare; they build it.

Together, we are building the world’s first digitally-enabled, evidence-based social prescription for burnout. Want to know more – here is a short presentation

Not just a programme that helps, but one that clinicians, employers, and insurers can stand behind.

It’s the kind of thing that should have existed a long time ago.

We’re looking for organisations ready to help us get there

To reach clinical validation at the scale needed for formal recognition, we’re running a 30 to 50-person pilot study. And this is where we need your help.

We’re looking for HR leaders at organisations who are ready to move beyond managing burnout after it happens.

Participating is straightforward:

Your team experiences Happiness Tour firsthand.
Participants complete pre and post assessments using our Speech AI and patient reported outcome measures.
You receive a full wellbeing report for your organisation.
And your data contributes to something larger than your organisation alone: a global standard for burnout prevention built on what people need.

Be part of the change

We have the science, the partnership, and 28 tours’ worth of evidence that this works. What we’re missing is you.

This is your invitation.

Reach out to join the pilot, sponsor a team tour, or simply start a conversation. This is the kind of thing that’s better built together.