2024 Happy Workplaces Conference

Isaac Getz: Author and Professor at ESCP Business School

Creating a Liberated Company that treats employees as adults

Isaac Getz is an author, conference speaker, senior advisor and currently holds the post of Professor at ESCP Business School.

He specializes in the areas of leadership and organisational transformation and has been instrumental in the modern corporate liberation movement involving hundreds of companies and institutions in Europe and Canada.

Isaac is the co-author of the award-winning international best-seller Freedom, Inc. (2009) with Brian Carney, which has been translated into fifteen languages. He is also author of the award-winning Liberated Company (2017), co-author of Leadership without Ego (2019) with Bob Davids and Brian Carney and co-author of The Altruistic Enterprise (2019) with Laurent Marbacher.

His work has been instrumental in the rise of the corporate liberation movement in Europe and Canada. Since 2012, hundreds of companies and institutions have transformed their command-and-control organisations into freedom-and responsibility-based ones. Major adoptees include Michelin, Airbus, Decathlon, EDF, the French Social Security, and several Belgian ministries and French municipalities.

Michelle Hill: Chief Executive of TLC: Talk, Listen, Change

How to maintain your organisation’s culture whilst growing

TLC: Talk, Listen, Change is a national relationships charity. The organisation delivers a range of integrated support, therapies and interventions in pursuit of safe, healthy and happy relationships. Prior to joining the organisation, Michelle spent 12 years working for NArco, the crime reduction charity. She started there working with young people at risk of offending and finished leading an organisation-wide change programme.

Michelle is also a Non Executive Director at MSV Housing where she chairs their Customer and Communities Committee,  a trustee of the BGF Foundation and trustee and treasurer at Christ Church Stockport.

Michelle holds a MBA, is a Clore Social Fellow (2017), was highly commended as Charity Director of the Year at the North West Charity Awards (2017 and 2018), won the Manchester Young Talent Awards Entrepreneur of the Year (2019), is a Social CEO (2017, 2018 and 2019) and was highly commended as Digital CEO of the Year (2019) at the Just Giving Awards.

Femi Otitoju: Founder of the EW Group, A Trailblazer in Diversity and Inclusion

Agile and Authentic Leadership: a people focused approach to managing diversity

Femi founded her equality and diversity consultancy in 1985 and has dedicated her career to advancing diversity and inclusion. With over 35 years experience, she combines her scientific background with persuasive training, facilitation and coaching skills.

Femi continues to design and deliver customised training programs for clients, covering topics such as racial and gender equity, inclusive leadership, cultural awareness, and dignity at work.

Femi’s impact reaches across private, public, and voluntary sectors. Her inclusion strategies and training have transformed organisations.  She has been supporting cultural transformation in The Houses of Parliament for five years, past clients include the BBC, L’Oreal, The Lego Foundation and Save the Children.

Voluntary work has also always been important to Femi, she volunteered for Switchboard for 13 years and spent 6 years as chair of National Women’s Aid.

Femi’s legacy lies in her unwavering commitment to creating a more inclusive world—one where diversity is celebrated, biases are challenged, and dignity prevails.

Caron Bradshaw OBE: CEO of Charity Finance Group

Leading with love

Caron joined CFG in 2010 from the ICAEW where she was Head of the Charity and Voluntary Sector. In addition to supporting a number of small charities and community organisations Caron has been a member of the NCVO’s National Assembly and the Charities SORP Committee, has sat on a number of government working parties, is a member of the Church of England Pension Board’s Audit and Risk Committee, and is the former Chair of the Board of the Directory of Social Change (and her local hockey club). She was named in the top 30 UK social influences in Risk, Compliance and Regtech 2017.

Caron is a trained Barrister and has a wide array of experience across charity, regulation/law, policy, member support, and professional ethics. In 2015 she was named Charity Principal of the Year at the Charity Times Awards. In 2016 she received the Association Excellence Award for Leadership. Caron is an avidly ‘social’ CEO and was been named in the top 30 social CEOs in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Caron was honoured with an OBE for 'services to charity' in the New Year's Honours list 2021.

Michele Zanini: Co-founder of the Management Lab

Building Organisations that Enable Extraordinary Accomplishment

‌A deep sense of accomplishment drives happiness at work. This is often found in environments where...

• Employees are united in a shared mission that merits heartfelt commitment;
• Ambitious goals and tight timelines challenge everyone to do more with less;
• Roles are broadly conceived with plenty of scope for personal growth;
• Teams are small, roles are loosely defined, and policies are flexible;
• Everyone is “customer facing” and accountable for real-world impact;
• People feel part of a densely connected, collaborative community;
• Team members are unencumbered by unnecessary layers and processes;
• Employees think and act like owners.

‌In other words, in organisations that are bold, simple, lean, open, flat, and free. These are not the worlds to describe the typical large company, with its authoritarian power structures and rule-chocked processes. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. Bureaucracy, with its toxic side effects on happiness and productivity, is a choice. There are better ways to lead, manage, and organize. During this session, we’ll dive into these alternative models and unpack what they mean for you and your company.

Michele Zanini is the co-founder of the Management Lab, an organisation dedicated to developing knowledge, technology and tools to support breakthrough management innovation. The goal: to help large organisations become more daring, resilient, creative, and inspiring places to work. He is co-author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside them (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020; 2nd edition due out in 2024).

Dr Nigel Paine: author, podcaster, broadcaster and consultant

Why Organisational Learning is Important

With over 25 years of experience in corporate learning, Nigel is a regular speaker, writer, and broadcaster on the topics of learning culture, technology, and leadership. Between 2002 and 2006 Nigel headed up the BBC’s Learning and Development operation. Following this, he started his own company, NigelPaine.com Ltd, which is focused on building great workplaces that develop great people.

Nigel helped set up the CLO Doctoral Program at UPenn and has written three books recently on leadership learning and learning culture. He presents a monthly TV programme (Learning Now TV), and shares a weekly podcast (with Martin Couzins) called From Scratch. Nigel is involved in Learnovate, based in Trinity College Dublin. Learnovate is a learning research and innovation think tank. Nigel Chaired the Learnovate Thought Leaders Circle in 2023, and has chaired iVentiv events in Australia, Europe, and the United States. His next book is due out in June 2024. It will focus on the power of organizational learning to build agility and resilience and happiness in organisations.

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