Media veteran and former Viacom18 COO Raj Nayak-founded House of Cheer, the organisation behind the Happiest Places to Work Certification, hosted the inaugural Happiest Places to Work Awards in Mumbai.

According to a press release from the organisers House of Cheer, the awards (the event was held on August 17), recognised organisations across India for their efforts in employee happiness, workplace culture and wellbeing.

The winners were selected based on employee happiness dialogue results, sentiment analysis, external feedback and a detailed Culture Audit.

The jury was led by Harsh Goenka, Chairman of RPG Group, along with Achal Khanna, Harit Nagpal, Sunita Rebecca Cherian, Pushp Kumar Nayar, Pavitra Singh, Nitu Bhushan and Dr. Prajjal Saha.

Culture Audit scores and Happiness Quotients were used to determine the final rankings.

In the enterprise categories, Agarwal Estates won the Nano Enterprise award, The Red Pen won in the Micro Enterprise category and Intellias India was named the winner in the Small Enterprise category. Midday won the Medium Enterprise award, Raychem RPG won in the Large Enterprise category, while KEC International was recognised as the Very Large Enterprise winner.

The jury also presented four special awards. Natural Remedies won Best Learning and Growth Culture, Goosebumps Network received the Most Innovative Initiative award, United Way of Delhi was recognised as the Most Inclusive Workplace and Sunbeam Industrial Products won Best Recognition Program.

Each winner received the Golden Penguin, the official symbol of the Happiest Places to Work Awards, representing happiness, togetherness and camaraderie.

House of Cheer said the awards aim to become an annual celebration of organisations that are setting new benchmarks for employee-friendly workplace culture in India.

The Happiest Places to Work Certification uses principles of neuroscience to measure factors such as motivation, trust and belonging at work and is available in 18 languages.