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.
There is much talk about different generations, and at times the narrative seems to imply how incompatible Gen Xers like me are with our younger colleagues. Managing a team with people across the generational divide can bring serious challenges – there are more over 60s in the workplace than ever before and digital natives at the other end whose adult life experience has been totally in the post-COVID world.
Nigel Paine headed the BBC’s Learning and Development operation. He built an award winning Leadership programme, state of the art informal learning and knowledge sharing and one of the most successful and well used intranets in the corporate sector.
Gallup has found that in the UK, only 17% of employees get to do what they are best at everyday at work. But when they do get to do what they are best at, they are 30-40% more productive. At Happy, we get every member of staff to take the Gallup StrengthsFinder survey to find out their strengths, and have team job descriptions so that teams can delegate tasks to who it best suits. In this short video, taken from the Happy Workplace Round Table on 23rd October 2024, Henry gives examples about how Happy and other organisations have gotten people to work to their strengths. How can you implement these ideas at your workplace?
How are decisions made in your organisation? Are they made by the frontline staff, or by the managers? Henry Stewart explains how you can get rid of outdated hierarchical decision-making processes in this Happy Workplace Round Table, recorded on Wednesday 6th November 2024.
In this video, recorded from his live session on Wednesday 9th October, Henry Stewart highlights the importance of coaching in the workplace - and asks, does your organisation have a coaching culture?
In this short video, recorded from his live session on Wednesday 10th July, Henry Stewart talks about getting people to do the job in an interview. He shares examples from Happy's recruitment process as well as from Toyota.
“Your Level 7 Senior Leadership apprenticeship is absolutely brilliant,” says Jason Michell of TypeFi. “One of the best things I’ve done in the last decade. It’s the best money I’ve never spent.” The Level 7 Senior Leadership programme is paid for from the Apprenticeship Levy if you have over £3 million in payroll. If not, the government pays 95% of it, so your organisation pays just £700 for a two-year leadership programme with monthly workshops and regular coaching.
“Leadership is a term, much like ‘strategy’, that is misused and misunderstood. I don’t believe that being a leader is about being the CEO, hierarchy, wielding power and control or having all the answers. Yet leaders can have a hard time breaking out of the traditional concepts of leadership and embracing a different approach. And others fail to recognise their own leadership qualities considering themselves too junior or lacking that leadership ‘title’,” says Caron Bradshaw OBE.
"In every aspect of our lives — in politics, in economics, in entertainment, and in family life — we demand the freedom to decide matters for ourselves. And yet when it comes to our work lives, far too many people are stifled, constrained, hemmed in, and tied down by bureaucracy and rules that have nothing to do with allowing them to do the best they can in their jobs. These constraints leave people feeling out of control of their work lives, which, in turn, leads to stress, fatigue, and disengagement from work."
Find out from Henry Stewart how you can create a workplace culture based on trust by using Pre-Approval. In this 30-minute video, recorded from his live session on 10th April, Henry gives examples from Happy and from Netflix about how Pre-Approval has been used in practice. He also hears from people attending and how Pre-Approval could work in their organisation, and what the barriers are to using it.