What Would Your Team Be Like if Everyone Was Working to Their Strengths?

At Happy, we use the Strengths Finder by Marcus Buckingham to find out what each team member's strengths are. In each team, everyone shares their strengths and the tasks that they enjoy doing the most to ensure that everyone can work to their strengths as much as possible. What would your team be like if everyone was working to their strengths? How much more productive would they be? In this short video from the 2019 Happy Workplaces Conference, Cathy Busani, Happy's Managing Director, explains the benefits of working to your strengths.

Why you should give responsibility to frontline practitioners

Across a 25 year career in social work, Isabelle Trowler has consistently railed against a raft of imposed procedures and rules. In this four-minute clip from the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference, Isabelle explains what happened when she started to delegate the decision-making as close to the frontline as possible.

TLC: Talk, Listen, Change: Maintaining Culture in a Growing Organisation

Michelle Hill is the CEO of TLC: Talk Listen, Change, a charity that believes every adult and child needs to be surrounded by safe, healthy and happy relationships. They do work around counselling, therapy, domestic abuse prevention and more within that sector. In this video from the 2024 Happy Workplaces Conference, Michelle breaks down the strategy TLC has implemented to ensure that there is an ideal culture in place and how they've maintained that as the organisation has grown.

Building a Culture of Trust at the National Audit Office

Susan Ronaldson is the NAO's Director for Engagement and Change. She was joined by Steve Mirfin, Head of Skills and Talent, at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference to speak about the measures the NAO has taken to get the best out of its people. Read the transcript and watch the full talk below.

The Future of Work is Human

Peter Cheese, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, believes humans will maintain indispensable workplace significance even as technology continues to expand. View Peter's talk from the 2017 Happy Workplaces conference, in which he makes a compelling case for why the future of work is human.

Build a business, create a great culture, win awards and make a profit

Dominic Monkhouse developed the UK divisions of the web-hosting businesses, Rackspace and Peer 1. He tried to make them exciting places to work by giving employees freedom within clear guidelines and heeding the "recruit for attitude, train for skill" precept. In his talk at the 2017 Happy Workplaces CEO conference, Dom poses the question, “What are you going to make a difference in? Who with?” Watch the full talk here.

3 v 45: The three most important things I've learned about culture change

Isabelle Trowler became the chief social worker for Children and Families in 2013. The title of her talk at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference—“3 versus 45”— refers to her general tendency to speak about 45 things. For this talk, Isabelle sought to condense the lessons she’s learned over a 25 year career into three main points she thinks everyone should take on board. Watch the full talk here.

8 Principles From Some of the Best Workplaces on the Planet

In January 2016, Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree quit their boring corporate jobs to travel the world and visit the world’s most radical and engaged workplaces.

"Thank you." These simple words are two of the most important in your vocabulary. But when was the last time that you said thank you to a colleague?

Doing Things Differently in Children's Services

As Head of Children’s Services at Monmouthshire County Council, Tracy Jelfs faced the difficult task of improving KPIs, reining in spending and creating a happy, engaged workplace while also delivering quality services to vulnerable children and young people. Speaking at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference, Tracy details her experiences tackling these twin challenges.

Implementing Happy Principles in a Public Sector Mutual

Brendan O’Keefe was inspired by the Happy Manifesto and sought to implement its ideas at Epic CiC—an education support public mutual founded in response to the changing landscape of public sector funding. Speaking at the 2017 Creating Happy Workplaces in the Public Sector Conference, Brendan explains how he took a more active role in stimulating great results and growing a happy workplace.

Humanity Above Bureaucracy: How Buurtzorg Reinvented Dutch Home Care

Brendan Martin of UK organisation Public World was serving as the principal carer for his mum when he noticed that UK home care organisations weren't just typically underfunded, but also managed in counterproductive ways. He's been working in collaboration with Dutch home care organisation Buurtzorg to improve home care in the UK. Madelon van Tilburg has been at Buurtzorg since 2011. Buurtzorg differs from her previous employers in that it lets nurses exercise freedom and responsibility in the job they’re trained for. Brendan and Madelon spoke at the 2017 Happy Workplaces Conference about how Buurtzorg reinvented Dutch home care and how the same could be done in the UK.

Could a 4 Day Week Work in Your Sector? Yes!

At Happy we are engaged in the UK four-day working week pilot, with 70 UK companies testing the idea from June to November 2022. We've had huge interest, with my blogs on LinkedIn getting up to 10 times as many views as my other posts. But some respond by saying that it wouldn’t work in their sector. So I was very interested to read the book Shorter: How Smart Companies Work Less, Embrace Flexibility and Boost Productivity by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. This gives a whole range of examples from different sectors.

Creating Happy, Engaged Workplaces in a Traditional Industry

Gemma Beadle, the HR Manager at Advanced Technology Services UK, has a passion for wellbeing in the workplace. Joined by ATS Site Manager, Damien O’Neill, Gemma spoke at the 2017 Happy Workplaces conference about ATS’s achievements in creating a happy workplace. Read the transcript and watch the full video here.