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.
Today, Wednesday 20th March, is the first UN International Day of Happiness. Take the pledge to bring more happiness to others at the World Happiness Day web-site, add your Happy Heroes and see what events you can attend on the day.
This festive period I was avoiding Amazon (because of their UK tax avoidance) and found myself in a real bookshop. And what a delight. I could have spent hours there. I know, it is sad that this is rare experience for me.
One of our trainers, Dhira Wiggins, has spent most of October and November providing free database support for local charities. He had been allocated to a two month database training project, and then the client cancelled – leaving Dhira with an empty diary. It didn’t make sense, for him or for Happy, to have nothing to do so we emailed our charity clients asking if any needed some free help setting up or fixing a database (as this is Dhira’s speciality). It proved quite a popular offer and Dhira ended up providing support to eleven different charities, including.
I often ask groups where they have found the best customer service. Two companies stand out and always come up: Apple and John Lewis. And when lists are published of the UK’s most admired businesses you can be sure that John Lewis is at or near the top. So I felt greatly honoured yesterday to be speaking alongside Charlie Mayfield, Chair of John Lewis (at Tomorrow’s Company “Tomorrow’s Value” event).
If you want to be happy at work, don’t go and work in the financial services industry. That is the message from the Career Happiness Index 2012, conducted by City and Guilds.
This week the Bank of England decided to pump an extra £50 billion of electronic money into the UK economy, bringing the total of quantitative easing to a huge £375 billion. Scanning the responses to this I retweeted this suggestion from @andyo: “Rather than pumping £50B into the banks, the BoE could give each household £2K. Surely that would have more effect?”
I have run Happy Ltd now for 22 years and employ around 30 people. Three years ago we employed 35 but, as staff have left, we have turned to using freelancers instead of recruiting a permanent replacement. However this has nothing to do with how easy it is to dismiss permanent staff. We are turning to freelancers because, in the current market, we cannot be sure of the level of demand. I have often been at events where fellow entrepreneurs and small business owners complain about red tape and employment law. Last time I asked the examples they gave were “the minimum wage”, “maternity pay” and even “holiday entitlement”. These are not unfair burdens. These are the basic requirements of running a decent business. I am delighted that we have regulations like this because it means decent businesses cannot be undercut by those prepared to do anything to make a buck.
People don’t resist change, they resist being changed. See how Marion Janner’s approach to change in the workplace was too good to resist.
At TrainingZone Live this morning, Michele Owens of the Olympic Delivery Authority gave an interesting example of how people reacted to different approaches.
I was very struck today by an article in a local London paper, the Islington Tribune, on the special customer service award given to a local corner shop.