Here you can find all of Happy’s blog posts, covering our Excel hints and tips, ideas for creating happy workplaces, and ways to be more productive at work — and more.
The latest update to Excel 2019 includes six new functions: CONCAT, TEXTJOIN, MINIFS And MAXIFS, IFS, SWITCH and XLOOKUP. In this blog, Edmund, one of our Office experts, explains what you need to know about them.
One of the great features in Outlook now is that you can automatically set up Teams meeting. With a click of a button, Outlook will create a calendar invite with a link for people to join using Teams — saving lots of time! With many of us now working from home permanently, you can change Outlook to default to online meetings, saving you even more time. In this week's blog by our expert trainers Sal and Ebe, find out how to do it.
When Happy's Paul Gapper was thirty-eight, he decided he wanted to leave his job as a probation officer and become a freelance trainer. At the time, the BBC had published a series of books by Tony Buzan on Mindmapping, speed reading and memory techniques. Paul was intrigued by the idea that you could start from a central idea and, on a single sheet of paper, expand your thinking around it. In this blog, Paul talks about how Mindmaps have helped with the development of his career, as well as how to develop your own effective Mindmaps.
It is clear we are heading into yet another new phase of working arrangements. Some staff are gleefully returning to working in the office, some are planning on returning soon, and some who are nowhere near ready to do this! So how do we navigate everyone's wants and needs whilst still running our business, and still providing amazing service to our clients? In this blog, Cathy shares how Happy has handled hybrid working over the past 18 months during lockdown and beyond.
In this three-minute clip from the 2017 Happy Workplaces CEO Conference, Dom Monkhouse explains why organisations being specific with their values is so essential and why not doing so means the organisation will just end up being beige.
Isabelle Trowler became the chief social worker for Children and Families in 2013. The title of her talk at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference—“3 versus 45”— refers to her general tendency to speak about 45 things. For this talk, Isabelle sought to condense the lessons she’s learned over a 25 year career into three main points she thinks everyone should take on board. Watch the full talk here.
Across a 25 year career in social work, Isabelle Trowler has consistently railed against a raft of imposed procedures and rules. In this four-minute clip from the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference, Isabelle explains what happened when she started to delegate the decision-making as close to the frontline as possible.
Dominic Monkhouse developed the UK divisions of the web-hosting businesses, Rackspace and Peer 1. He tried to make them exciting places to work by giving employees freedom within clear guidelines and heeding the "recruit for attitude, train for skill" precept. In his talk at the 2017 Happy Workplaces CEO conference, Dom poses the question, “What are you going to make a difference in? Who with?” Watch the full talk here.
Brendan O’Keefe was inspired by the Happy Manifesto and sought to implement its ideas at Epic CiC—an education support public mutual founded in response to the changing landscape of public sector funding. Speaking at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference, Brendan explains how he took a more active role in stimulating great results and growing a happy workplace.
As Head of Children’s Services at Monmouthshire County Council, Tracy Jelfs faced the difficult task of improving KPIs, reining in spending and creating a happy, engaged workplace while also delivering quality services to vulnerable children and young people. Speaking at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference, Tracy details her experiences tackling these twin challenges.