Coca-Cola is hawking happiness along with its wares. On its happiness site (Mahatma Gandhi gets top billing with his quote “Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony”), it is difficult to locate India. It comes under Eurasia, while Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are listed under Asia-Pacific. The world looks different from Atlanta.

Coke is offering free drinks and fluffy toys from a specially-designed truck in select cities in India. It is a great photo-op – thousands of cheering college kids standing in line for a sip and going ga-ga over the cute teddy bears.

 In Dubai, the company has put a different spin on things. Recognising that most of the labour comes from India, Coke is offering free phone calls back home in exchange for Coca-Cola bottle caps.

 “To give labourers in the UAE a few extra minutes of happiness, Coca-Cola created the Hello Happiness Phone Booth -- a special phone booth that accepts Coca-Cola bottle caps instead of coins for a free 3-minute international phone call, helping them connect with their families back home more often,” says the Happiness website. It is good business too. The labourers have to drink Coke to get hold of the caps. Sales go up and, with the proper use of technology, it can’t be costing all that much. Skype is free.

The Coke instance is spreading happiness outside its immediate environment. Most companies, however, are more concerned about their employees, customers and suppliers. It has not come very far in India. Except for some startups, you will not find Chief Happiness Officers in most other places. In startups, there is no time to have fun, far less happiness.

It’s a different matter abroad. Happiness is seen as a very effective way of engaging workers and an engaged worker is more productive. How does it matter if the office staff wastes five minutes laughing? They would otherwise have spent 50 minutes gossiping.

A company called Happier.com has even come out with an App to spread happiness. The mobile app is a simple way to collect happy moments and then share them with friends and family. It is a more sophisticated version of sending a smiley on WhatsApp.

The subject of happiness in a corporate environment is so important that the Net is full of tips on how to do it. The Muse has 37 ways to be happier at work. Forbes offers “16 things guaranteed to make you happy at work”. Monster.com details “10 tips to stay happy at work”. Inc.com has “15 proven tips to be happy at work”. Hppy (obviously happiness is a late starter in the game; happy.com belongs to Happy Harry, a part of retail drug chain Walgreens) has a monstrous offering – “25 little things that make you feel happy at work”. Time magazine keeps it short and simple — “5 scientifically-proven ways to be happier at work”. What is its prescription?

Start the day on a good note. Make it a point to do something in the morning that makes you feel good. Get some fresh air.

Make fewer decisions. Decision fatigue is real: each decision you make depletes your cognitive resources, making each future decision more difficult.

Help a colleague. Helping others makes you happier. And helping your colleagues makes you happier at work.

Make progress and acknowledge it. Even on really bad days, if I can point to a few things that I accomplished, I feel better.

End your workday with a simple gratitude pause. You can train your brain to better remember the positive things. In other words, you can fight your natural negativity bias.

Now the bad news: only 13 per cent of employees worldwide are engaged at work, according to a recent Gallup 142-country study. In other words, the vast majority are likely to be unhappy.

You can take a horse to the water but you cannot make him dance.