1. Professional Development

Mika's educational and professional designations include: BA, MBS and LEED AP+.  She is a Certified Wellness Coach and is half-way through her designation to become a member of the WELCOA faculty.  Her most recent accomplishment was earning a diploma in Social Innovation through the United Nations (UN) Mandated UPEACE for Executive Education.

Her interest in wellness began when she worked on the early stages of a pilot program with CBRE on the Delos Building Standard to promote human health and well-being by marrying the best innovations in technology, health, science, design and enterprise.   She continues to further her education through research on health & wellness with a focus on health, happiness and well-being.

2. Demonstrated Success

The Worker Happiness Index™ provides businesses with new insights into the human capital strategies that generate economic value to produce business success.  The WHI is based on ten (10) performance outcomes to assess worker well-being: Health, Psychological Well-Being, Financial Well-Being, Work, Organizational Structure (Governance), Community Vitality, Social Support, Environment, Culture and Time Balance and together, it produces four (4) business outcomes: Productivity, Employee Retention, Profitability, and Customer Satisfaction.

In a pilot program, ten (10) interventions (see below for the list) to address the ten (10) performance outcomes were implemented and as a result, the company was able to demonstrate a reduction of 109.92 Hours/Employee/Year in sick days, 21% reduction in turnover and an increase of 3.64% profitability per Employee/Year since its inception of the interventions across three years. 

• Rideshare program (to promote walking and biking to work)
• Profit sharing program (to increase financial security)
• Remote worker option (to encourage autonomy in the workplace)
• "Not at your desk" healthy lunches (to promote healthy lunches while fostering social support)
• Fully paid gym memberships (to promote physical activity)
• Open vacation policy (to set reasonable working hours)
• Professional development program (to promote growth in the workplace)
• Development of "Pitch Day" (to allow all voices in the company to be heard )
• Paid volunteering time off (to support public service in the local community)
• Monthly goal "check-ins" (to ensure accountability and clarity on expectations)

Since the start of the pilot program, the CEO was involved (Benchmark 1) and a champion was appointed to develop an internal team in the company (Benchmark 2).  Through the data collection that included the WHI output (Benchmark 3), ten (10) interventions were implemented (Benchmark 5) and written into the company's operating plans that included policies, programs and plans (Benchmark 5) that led to a supportive environment (Benchmark 6) which helped the company to make informed decisions on future worker benefits in areas that add value for the organization based on the outcomes that were evaluated (Benchmark 7).

"Place of the Future has been a great asset to Exygy as we grow our organization.  They have provided expert advice on workplace well-being and engagement, and have provided real insight on how to proceed with future worker benefits in areas that add value for the organization.  Place of the Future would be a valuable asset for all companies looking to add a competitive edge and increase employee retention for their business.  We at Exygy could not be happier with their work"

- Zach Berke, Chief Executive Officer at Exygy       

3. Leadership

Mika Kim is a frequent public speaker.  In May 2014, she was invited to speak at the Gross National Happiness Conference at the University of Vermont on the current state of well-being in Los Angeles and previous to that, she spoke at the 2014 Social Enterprise Alliance Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Her recent accomplishments have been through her role on the Board of DRNC where she's been able to get the organization approved as Consortium members for Healthy People 2020 and shortly before that to align the organization to work alongside the Let's Move! program developed by the First Lady Michelle Obama to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity.

Her monthly blog on various Health & Wellness issues have over 10,000 followers with a recent quote featured in the Guardian Sustainable Business.  

4. Innovation

After a decade of research, it has been shown that "happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcomes:  raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a myriad of health and quality of life improvements" - Harvard Business Review

Place of the Future is the creator of the Worker Happiness Index™, a web-enabled workplace performance measurement tool based on ten (10) performance outcomes across thirty eight (38) indicators and the Happy Company™ Certification, a program that recognizes the best-in-class human capital strategies and practices.  Our tools have now been accepted in the B Impact Assessments as "Best Practices" under the employee engagement category for companies certified to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.  

5. Compelling Vision

Let's measure what matters.  For far too long now, we've focused on measurements of national performance based on gross domestic product (GDP), but such measures are much too narrow.  By widening our focus to include subjective measures of our well-being will allow for all of us to address the critical needs of our population, including indicators such as our health, financial and psychological well-being.  As the CEOs of Healthways and Gallup have said, "using metrics that matters most in people's daily lives is a critical step to success."