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.
In this talk from the 2023 Happy Workplaces Conference, Rachel talks about the power of dreams to create a happy workplace, and motivating and retaining staff in a notoriously difficult sector. Rachel discusses the importance of trust, listening to staff and linking with local communities, as well as gardens, a miniature Shetland pony, holidays, and Duvet Days.
In this entertaining talk from the 2023 Happy Workplaces Conference, Natalie shares how her enthusiasm for implementing a four-day working week turned to disappointment and how she worked with her team to bring about a solution that worked for everyone.
Liz Wiseman is the CEO of The Wiseman Group, a talent development and research organisation in Silicon Valley, California. Liz is also the author of bestsellers Multipliers and Impact Players, and is consistently rated by Thinkers50 as a top ranked thinker. In her book Impact Players, Liz identifies two types of people: Ordinary Contributors and Impact Players, and noted that there were five practices that differentiated the Impact Players from the Ordinary Contributors. In this video, from the 2022 Happy Workplaces Conference, Liz tells us more about the concept and takes us through the five characteristics of Impact Players.
Andrew Barnes is the head of New Zealand's biggest corporate trust company, Perpetual Guardian, but he's probably better known as the father of the four-day week movement. Andrew trialled the four-day week at Perpetual Guardian in 2018, despite a lot of fear and opposition from his board and management team. It was a resounding success and has grown into a movement with unprecedented momentum. In this video from the 2022 Happy Workplaces Conference, Andrew explores some of the data supporting the four-day working week and challenges you to think about how it would work in your organisation.
Speaking at the 2017 Happy Workplaces conference, Nita Clarke OBE and David MacLeod OBE look at the increasing demands employees have of their workplaces and the four enablers of employee engagement.
By investing in its people, US e-commerce company Next Jump has experienced both revenue growth and business transformation. In this talk at the 2017 Beyond Budgeting Conference, Kevin and Chris from Next Jump explain how to navigate the "lying, hiding, faking" problem and how investing in leadership development will get you to Beyond Budgeting.
Bjarte Bogsnes has worked in finance and HR at Norwegian energy company Statoil (now called Equinor) for over 35 years. In his talk at the 2017 Beyond Budgeting Conference, Bjarte—who's also the Chairman at the Beyond Budgeting Institute—explains how it’s possible to hang onto the flexibility of a small organisation without losing the benefits of being big.
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.
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.