Ethical Investment: It Has Paid Off For Me

Recently I’ve found myself several times in lively discussions about whether choosing to invest ethically means accepting a lower financial return.

The Happy Manifesto has been launched for a week, and so far we’ve sold just over 500 copies. That is not going to get The Happy Manifesto into the best seller charts but it is 10% of the print run and enough to pay off 80% of the total production costs – which is nice given that we self-published it.

The Gender Pay Gap at Happy

Would the gender pay gap be less if salaries were transparent? The average woman at Happy is paid 1.1% more than the average man. I think that’s close enough to count as one of the 9% of companies that pay women and men roughly the same.

The 4 Day Week on The Office: Re-Defined Documentary

Happy was recently featured in The Office: Re-Defined documentary, created by Inês Santos, Noopur Jambhekar and Anagha Raghunath. In this short extract, The Office: Re-Defined explores the four-day working week. Inês interviewed Happy's founder and Chief Happiness Officer, Henry Stewart, about the four-day week and our experiences so far. In our 'new normal' following the pandemic, is this the future of the office?

The conference will be held on 13th June at the Light in Friends House. This beautiful venue is directly opposite Euston Station in central London, and just a stone’s throw away from King’s Cross and St Pancras station.

The Pursuit of Joy at Work at Happy

Cathy Busani's goal for the staff at Happy is that they experience joy in at least 80% of their work. In this video from the the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Cathy explains how she aims to achieve this by focusing on strengths-based working — asking staff to think about what they are great at and seeing how they can incorporate it into their day-to-day working.

8 Companies That Celebrate Mistakes

Do we want people to make mistakes? The answer I generally get to this question is 'Yes', because people recognise that this is how we learn and discover new ways of doing things. In this blog, find out about eight companies that celebrate mistakes by staff, and how they do it.

How to Facilitate Change in Your Organisation

Sometimes, the best way to facilitate change in an organisation is to behave as though you have no authority – suggesting best practice, rather than imposing change on others. In this blog, Happy’s Senior Facilitator Paul Gapper takes a look at the ways you can facilitate change positively within your organisation.

Three Reasons Why You’ll Love Power BI Desktop

If you analyse data in Excel then you’ll love Power BI Desktop.

'Love', Kindness and Patience are the Keys to Leadership, Says Caron Bradshaw

“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.

Beyond making companies earn more, happy and engaged employees also help firms to significantly reduce costs.

1 Million Pounds to Spend and Nobody is Interested

Happy is moving. A month ago, just before the deadline for the landlord’s break clause approached, a law clerk arrived at our office and served a notice to quit. The landlord plans to redevelop the building and we have to be out of our office by 30th October.

Let’s Get Real On Empowering Our People

Over the last couple of years, Happy has undergone a transformation. Why? Because as chief happiness officer Henry Stewart revealed at the beginning of his talk at the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Happy was losing a lot of money. Assessing the financial downturn, Henry and his leadership team realised they’d lost sight of some core principles. So instead of cutting things and getting more hierarchical, the turnaround was made possible by revisiting their core principles and acting in accordance.  One thing that Henry decided to do is make no decisions. Find out why in this video.

Make the Most of Office 365’s Latest Updates

One of the perks of being an Office 365 subscriber is Microsoft’s regular unfurling of new features and updates for the software’s constituent apps (Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Visio and Word).