Henry is founder and Chief Happiness Officer of Happy Ltd, originally set up as Happy Computers in 1987. Inspired by Ricardo Semler’s book Maverick, he has built a company which has won multiple awards for some of the best customer service in the country and being one of the UK’s best places to work.
Henry was listed in the Guru Radar of the Thinkers 50 list of the most influential management thinkers in the world. "He is one of the thinkers who we believe will shape the future of business," explained list compiler Stuart Crainer.
His first book, Relax, was published in 2009. His second book, the Happy Manifesto, was published in 2013 and was short-listed for Business Book of the Year.
You can find Henry on LinkedIn and follow @happyhenry on Twitter.
Have you, like me, been to a number of online events where you just have to sit and listen while the speakers talk? There may be people that feel they learn well from this approach, but I honestly doubt it. You would probably be better off listening to some TED Talks. In this blog, Happy’s CHO Henry Stewart provides a step-by-step account of how to create a truly engaging online conference.
Around three years ago, Happy organised a vote of all our employees on whether they wanted to keep the annual appraisal. As we expected, they didn’t – with 83% voting to scrap them. Of course it still makes sense to carry out a regular review, so we replaced it with a four monthly happy@happy snapshot. Find out more in this blog.
If you are creating a Mail Merge, make sure that the first and last names are in different columns in your Excel spreadsheet using this handy tip.
Inspired by the Happy Manifesto, Reddico started the move to becoming self-managing in March 2018. In just 18 months it has resulted in happier employees, more satisfied customers, higher revenue and a big increase in profits. Henry Stewart spoke to Head of Operations Luke Kyte to learn how Reddico achieved this.
In September 2019, Henry was invited to speak at Conference Chang in Seoul, South Korea. The theme was 'Self, Work and Happiness', and Henry was delighted to spread the themes of happy workplaces and the Happy Manifesto. In this blog, Henry reflects on his visit to South Korea, happiness at work and some of the talks at the conference.
“We deal with people in very challenging circumstances and unhappy people aren’t going to provide good support for them. If you haven’t a job, haven’t much money coming along then it wouldn’t be good to see somebody who is miserable,” explains Katharine Horler OBE. Henry Stewart spoke to Katharine to find out 8 ways in which Adviza has created a happy workplace, centered on freedom and trust.
“How many of you feel you need to be managed?” asked Alison Sturgess-Durden at the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference. Nobody raised their hand. Alison, a Director at the software company Mayden, asked why we assume that people need to be “managed” at work. A small, but growing, number of organisations are taking a different approach.
Henry Stewart was invited to speak about the importance of happy and engaged workplaces at the Happiness and Humans Conference in May 2019, hosted by the Happiness Index. Watch his talk here.
At the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, a range of fabulous speakers shared ideas on how to create great workplaces based on trust and freedom. In this blog, Henry lists 49 of his favourite ideas from the event.
Some organisations have found that a four day week improves both wellbeing and productivity. If that sounds a bit daunting, how about a four day week for August?