happy Blogs

Helping Men and Women Get to Know Each Other Better at Work

Dr Jill Armstrong’s Collaborating With Men project aims to tackle everyday sexism in the workplace and lay the foundation for a more gender inclusive workplace. She believes men and women need to be working together more often if we’re ever going to see gender equality in the workplace. In this 90-second video from the 2018 Happy Workplaces Conference, Jill offers some ideas for getting men and women to form more relaxed social interactions in the workplace.

Well-Being Check-Ins: How To Prevent Staff Burnout

Burnout is a real issue in the creative media industry. To help prevent this, Nikki Gatenby introduced well-being check-ins. Nikki is the co-owner and managing director of Propellernet, a digital marketing agency that's been named as one of the top 10 Best Places to Work in the UK for six years running. In this two-minute video from the 2018 Happy Workplaces Conference, Nikki shares the four questions she uses to prevent burnout – are you taking your holiday? Are you taking your Propel days (their day a month to innovate)? Are you working with our resident coach? And do you know about our health plan?

What is the Purpose of Appraisals in Your Organisation?

After 16 years of working in HR, Sophie Bryan has found that appraisals are often used to keep evidence in case things go wrong, rather than to really improve staff performance and develop them as a person. In this two-minute video from the 2018 Happy Workplaces Conference, Sophie asks, "what would happen if your focus was to give feedback to your team in real time, and dig deeper with your questions – or if you scrapped the appraisals process altogether?

How to Delegate Tasks Successfully

Many leaders and managers will continually delegate tasks to the person they know will get it right every time, or else give things to a new recruit who’s full of beans and eager to please. But Happy's Cathy Busani knows this practice is flawed and has instead started delegating to the team and allowing them to decide who does what. In this two-minute video from the 2018 Happy Workplaces Conference, Cathy explains how to delegate tasks successfully.

Show a Colleague You Care With Random Acts of Kindness

During her presentation at the 2018 Happy Workplaces conference, Woohoo inc’s Arlette Bentzen underlined how random acts of kindness can be effective in enhancing total workplace happiness. In this short video, Arlette explains the principle is very simple: do something nice for your colleagues and they’ll become happier.

WorldBlu CEO Traci Fenton Underlines the Three Things Required to Create a Freedom-Centred Culture

WorldBlu CEO Traci Fenton believes we’re all meant to live our fullest potential. Through WorldBlu, Traci’s spent the last two decades working with clients in 80 countries, teaching them freedom at work. In this short video from the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference Traci explains that a freedom-centred mindset is essential for building a freedom-centred culture. "The root issue that stops world-class cultures from happening is fear. It’s the number one thing," she says.

Why Happy's Henry Stewart Stopped Making Leadership Decisions

Over the last couple of years, Happy has undergone a transformation. Happy was losing a lot of money a couple of years ago, but thanks to the transformation the London training company went from £185k loss to £166k profit in the space of one year. In this short video from the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Chief Happiness Officer Henry Stewart explains that he took inspiration from David Marquet, a leadership expert and former commander of the nuclear-powered submarine, USS Santa Fe. Marquet says, “If you want your people to think, don’t give instructions, give intent.” Henry followed suit. “It isn’t enough to not be the tyrant; you have to step out,” he says.

At Sure Petcare, a Happy Workplace Is More About What Leadership Doesn’t Do

Sarah Metcalfe is Head of Customer Service at Sure Petcare and she knows that a happy workplace is essential for enhancing the customer experience. When she asked her team, “what makes you happy at work?” what stood out was that it’s really more about what leadership doesn’t do. For example, they don’t impose SLAs or metrics. They don’t get mad if staff are late because they’re stuck in traffic. They don’t measure people and don’t ask them how long they’re going to be on the phone for. In this short video from the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Sarah explains what gives her team the ability to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy.

Transparency and Job Ownership at ATS UK Ltd

This year at Advanced Technology Services UK Limited, Derek Hill and his team have focused on increasing transparency and job ownership. This is particularly important as ATS has 185 locations across the globe, primarily in the US, Mexico and UK, and need ways to maintain and strengthen their company culture across borders. In this short video from the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Derek explains what ATS has done to increase transparency and job ownership across the business.

How Sky UK's HR Department has Embraced Design Thinking

At Sky UK, they have embraced Design Thinking to tackle common HR issues. Design Thinking is a methodology that provides a solution-based, human approach to problems. It aims to create multiple ideas during brainstorming, which can then be prototyped and tested in a empathetic way that people can easily understand. For Sky, in the final stage, they test people's reactions and gauge if it 'wows'. In this short video from the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Tracey Waters explains how they applied Design Thinking to the question 'how might we help people at Sky have a fulfilling career?'