Create a Happy Workplace

In this session, Henry invites you to think about the key principle of the Happy Manifesto: people work best when they feel good about themselves.

By the end of the session, you will have explored how that might apply to your organisation, department or team.

In this session, Henry makes the case for a happy workplace. He presents evidence to support the view that happy workplaces perform better.

This session focuses on what we really mean by a happy workplace. It’s not about fun or in-the-moment hedonism, it’s about long-term fulfilment or what’s called ‘Eudaimonism’.

By the end of the session you will understand the role of freedom and trust in creating a happy workplace.

Step out of approval; instead, pre-approve and focus on creating freedom within clear guidelines.

By the end of the session, you will understand how to use pre-approval to increase freedom and get out of the way.

This section looks at case studies from organisations that Happy has worked with and considers how they have put ideas about delegating authority into practice.

This session looks at the research on managers’ most important behaviour.

At the end of this session you will be familiar with the findings of Google's Project Oxygen on what makes the best managers.

A whirlwind tour of the coach’s key role and the types of meetings or coaching sessions a manager might have.

In this session, we look at setting targets and why the traditional method of setting them may not yield the best results.

By the end of the session, you will be able to think of two or three alternative ways to set targets.

In this session, Henry explores decision-making and what happens when managers step back from being ‘the expert’ and focus on enabling others to make the decisions.

By the end of this session, you will understand the benefits of stepping back from decisions and letting your people lead.

People work better when they are using their judgment and are actively engaged in what they are doing. In this session, Henry looks at the power of simple guidelines.

We all agree that feedback is important, but self-management and people finding their own ways to measure how they are doing is much more powerful.

By the end of this session, you will understand the difference between external feedback and self-feedback.

In this session, Henry explores involvement and empowerment. When people are not doing the thing you have made clear they should, it may be because they have not been involved in your decision-making and the information that informs your decision.

You’ve worked hard to create a culture of freedom and trust. What do you do when something goes wrong?

Henry looks at celebrating mistakes and shares the Happy philosophy that if you are not making mistakes, you are not trying hard enough.

Traditional recruitment that focuses on getting people to talk about their abilities in interviews almost guarantees you hire the wrong person – unless you are looking for someone who can talk in interviews.

By the end of the session, you will have two or three take-away ideas for improving recruitment by asking candidates to do the job in the recruitment process.

Asking for a generic degree can be discriminatory. It also reduces your recruitment pool and your best chance of finding the right person for the job.

In this session, Henry looks at collaborative recruiting. Involving the team when recruiting new people results in better decision-making and accountability; everyone will work hard to make the appointment work.

Workplace joy leads to better productivity and higher standards. In this session, Henry explores joy at work, and some of the things that can be put in place to help people achieve it.

Too often we are expected to work on our weaknesses rather that playing to our strengths. However, the evidence is clear – the more people work to their strengths the better the organisation or team’s productivity will be.

In this session, Henry explores how to get the best from everyone. Managers should be people who are great at managing people. Experts who don’t have great people skills use their expertise in a different way.

One of the most common reasons people leave their job is to get away from their current manager. In this session, we look at letting people choose who manages them and the positive effect that has on them and their teams.

Henry explores the relationship between a culture of ownership and accountability and a culture of openness and transparency – one reinforces the other.

When it comes to community, you need to walk the talk – donations are not enough. Henry explores a scale of options for creating benefit for all.

Endless work with no breaks and long hours do not help you, your team nor your organisation to be effective and productive.

Find out how ‘mad monk mornings’ and evening journaling can help you to be productive, not busy.