How Many of These Mistakes Do You Make in Your Online Meetings?

Love them or loathe them, we go to more meetings than ever, especially as more work is done in collaborative cross business teams. There are some simple steps we can all take to improve these group conversations dramatically and create leaps forward in clarity and progress. Meetings are surprisingly complex human interactions so making them more purposeful, more honest and easier to follow can have a seriously helpful effect. Try these five simple ideas to start with.

How Helen Sanderson MBE Has Created People-Centric Workplaces

Helen Sanderson originally set up Wellbeing Teams in 2016 with the aim of radically changing the way health and social care is delivered. Inspired by the Dutch care company Buurtzorg, Wellbeing Teams are small, neighbourhood self-managed care teams. They have coaches, but no managers. Find out how Helen created Wellbeing Teams as a self-managing organisation that is focused on letting team members be human with each other in Henry's blog.

Bring Generosity to the Heart of Your Business

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.

Pre-Approve It!

What is the key to creating a happy workplace? I’ve just a written a book with what I see as the 10 key principles of a great workplace but for me one thing stands out.

Epic's requirements were commercial capability and culture transformation. The key test was whether the new company could not just survive but successfully expand its services. Here's what we did.

How Microsoft Excel Can Increase Your Productivity

Microsoft Excel is certain to improve your life at work. Microsoft Excel is one of the modern workplace’s most indispensable computer programs. The daily operations of a huge variety of businesses – from travel adventure companies and art dealerships to retail stores and sports broadcasters – would be considerably tougher without the utility of Excel. It’s no exaggeration to call Excel the preeminent spreadsheet program, but for those unfamiliar with its workplace contributions, here’s a look at some productivity-boosting features.

Improve Collaboration for a More Productive Workplace

Would you like to collaborate and work better with your colleagues? In this blog, Billy gives his five tips to improve collaboration, starting with working on your Active Listening skills.

The Calming, Remedial Influence of Mindfulness

Mindfulness, put simply, is an exercise in attention. It’s a practice that revolves around calming the mind through meditation.

Work Less Hours, And Get More Done!

On the one hand we learned last week that Goldman Sachs view of work/life balance was to tell their interns to leave the office at midnight and take Saturdays off, limiting the working week to a mere 102 hours. A very different approach is being taken by Gothenberg City Council, in Sweden. In a new experiment, they have asked half their care staff to work 6 hour days instead of 8 hours to see if they get as much done. There are examples out there that suggest less time can be more productive:

Vivek Menon at Danfoss: Building a Teal Bubble in a Large Company

I am often asked whether you can build happy trust-based workplaces within a larger more hierarchical organisation. So I was very interested to hear about the eSteering team at Danfoss, a 120 person unit within a 40,000 strong company. Vivek Menon, a Senior Director at the Danish company Danfoss, explained at the Teal Around the World Conference how they created a culture of trust and freedom. Vivek will be speaking at the 2022 Happy Workplaces Conference.

How to be a Great Chair for Your Next Online Meeting

When people attend the Chairing Remote Meetings workshop, they often come looking for insight into the best online tools: Jamboard, Miro, Sli.do, Mentimeter, etc. We discuss them, and then we talk about the most important tool that a remote chair can use: the tennis racket.

Five Good News Stories From the Past 12 Months

It's been a tough 12 months. In 2019, the UK has had a lot of change — Brexit, a change of Prime Minister and then a general election. In winter, the UK suffered from severe flooding, and now, in spring, we are currently on lockdown due to Coronavirus (COVID-19). However, there is hope in this dark time. In this blog, Billy looks at five good news stories from the past 12 months that you may have missed.

Do You Make it Easy For Your Customers to Give Compliments?

Sitting in the reception of Central & Cecil Housing Association, one of our clients, I flicked through the information leaflets. Alongside the pamphlet on how to make a complaint was a more unusual one – a Compliments Guide. Yes, Central & Cecil had taken the trouble to create a guide to how let their people know when they’d done well.

Being Assertive and Building Trust: Keys to Workplace Satisfaction

Your experience at work will be enhanced – in terms of performance, personal satisfaction and long term behavioural benefits – by building trust and becoming more assertive. Find out more in this blog by Billy Burgess.