55 steps to Workplace Happiness

At the 2018 Happy Workplaces conference a range of fabulous speakers shared real examples of how they’ve created great workplaces. People often tell me they feel an event has been a success if they come away with 2 or 3 ideas to put into practice. I counted 55 this time. Check them out:

Cathy Busani, Managing Director, Happy Ltd

Our own MD kicked off the event, focusing on the difference at Happy from putting into practice the brilliant Multipliers concept of Liz Wiseman

1)     Are you a multiplier of your people’s talent? “Do you act as the expert, setting strategy, making key decisions and protecting your people? Those are diminishing behaviours. Or do you search out the talent in your people, create debate and step out of the way – to become a multiplier?”

2)     Think like a 3 year old: “Instead of thinking you know the answers, regain the curiosity of a 3 year old. Wonder why and wonder why not. Ask lots of questions.”

3)     Don’t delegate to individuals: Delegate to the team and let them work out who wants to do it, whose strength it works to.

4)     Talk less, listen more: Multipliers talk 10% or less of the time at team meetings, diminishers are likely to talk 30% or more.

5)     Help your people find joy at work: “Help them do something they are good at, working to their strengths and having the freedom to do it well. My goal is for all my team to get joy at work in 80% of what they do. I reckon I’m at 95%. Do what you love.”

6)     Do you light the room? Ask ‘Am I somebody that lights up the room when I enter – or when I leave it?”

7)     Get rid of job descriptions: “We moved from individual job descriptions to team descriptions. Agree what the team needs to do and then let the team figure out who does what.”

Nikki Gatenby, Managing Director Propellornet, @nikkigatenby

Nikki is MD of the Brighton based search company, which has been five years in the top dozen workplaces in the UK. Her book, Superengaged, is due out in September.

8)     Ask will it make us happier. When Ben Hunt-Davis and his team were training for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 (where they won Gold in rowing 8s) the key question at all times was “will it make the boat go faster?”. (An extra hour training? Yes, it will make the boat go faster. A pint down the pub? No, so they didn’t do it.) “So we ask ‘will it make us happier?’ and ‘will it make life better?’ If the answer is No, we don’t do it”.

9)     Help your people fulfil their dreams 1: Propellernet has a dream machine (an old bubble gum dispenser). People put what they’d love to do in a dreamball and – every so often- one gets drawn. The first two went to the world cup in Brazil. Another motorcycled round Africa. “We literally make our people’s dreams come true.”

10)  Help your people fulfil their dreams 2: Can you help your people fulfil their dreams at work? “One of our people was a mad keen cyclist so, when we got interest from Evans, he got to lead it. Another was committed to wildlife conservation in Africa. We teamed her up with a sustainable safari company in Namibia. They pay us in safaris – its very popular with staff!”

11)  Commute by bicycle not car: It will make you happier and reduce your risk of a heart attack by 42%.

12)  Put the phone down: Average working hours have increased by 27% since we put emails on the phone, she suggested. So put the phone away and stop using it for email.

13)  Making people happy is common sense: “Its not rocket science. Happy people do better work than miserable people”

14)  Business without purpose is just admin: Help your people find a reason to want to come to work, to be superengaged.

15)  Make engagement as important as margins: Happy, engaged staff perform better so focus on engagement to get the results you want.

16)  Say no to bastards. Be prepared to fire clients if they are too much of a pain. There are people who it is a joy to work with and you can get so much better work done with them.

17)  Use your Fresh Eyes: “New staff can be a revelation. I search them out and ask what they’ve spotted, what doesn’t seem right – before they’ve become too acclimatised”,

18)  Focus on engagement as much as profit: “People who are engaged perform better and deliver better commercial results. So put real focus on engagement."

Donna Reeves, ex Internal Communications Director, Kingfisher PLC

While at Kingfisher, Donna set up Project Maverick. The store manager in two of the B&Q stores agreed to step back and let their staff make the decisions.

19)  Get the boss to make no decisions: “When we did that at B&Q every KPI improved, staff could respond immediately to customers. As one said ‘The shackles have been removed. We can now say to a customer ‘yes I can do that for you.’”

20)  Forget the manuals and policies: “Get your people to be more human at work and just do the right thing.”

21)  Calm the Fish: To get great pictures, an underwater photographer must make sure they don’t disturb the fish with their presence. “As a manager you need to aim for the same thing, that your presence makes no difference.”

22)  Set up systems to make it inevitable that people do the right thing: “Stop putting blocks in people’s way, instead make it easy, inevitable that they do what’s right. Allow people to be people.

23)  As a boss, get out of the way: “Enable your people to use their full potential, not just 60% (or less) of it. “

24)  Its not about you: “It’s not about you as a manager. It’s about the team. If you trust the team, they will show up.”

Jill Armstrong, Research Fellow, Murray Edwards College, @JillArm21

Jason Ghabbos, Deputy Director Home Office

Jill and Jason are working together on building more gender inclusive work environments, and especially looking at what men can do to enable that.

25)  Happy workplaces are inclusive: You can’t create a truly happy environment if half the workforce feel excluded in any way.

26)  Women see things differently: 40% of women feel they are judged unfairly at work but 81% of men think that rarely happens to women. Research shows women are judged more negatively when they behave the same way as men.

27)  Help your people build inclusive networks: Set up informal pairing between mean and women who don’t know each other. Get men and women to sponsor or mentor each other. Enable new people to have coffee with 10 people in the first 3 months

28)  Ban eating at desks: End the continual work culture. Get people to take breaks and talk to people.

29)  As a man, speak out: People expect women to talk about gender issues. Set an example of speaking out in support of women.

30)  Speak out: If you spot other men showing double standards, say something. Don’t be afraid to engage openly in discussions on gender inclusivity

31)  Gender inclusivity is not a “women’s issue”: The research is clear: More inclusive organisations are more successful.

Patrick Steed, Andrea Callanan, Inspire Me, @InspireMe

After lunch the fabulous Patricka nd Andrea got the audience to their feet, pumped up the volume and got us all singing "there ain't no mountain high enough." A fabulous energy boost.

Laurence Vanhee, Chief Happiness Officer, Happyformance, @Happy_Laurence

Laurence was Chief Happiness Office at the Belgian Ministry of Social Security as it transformed its culture to be one of the most innovative parts of the public sector.

32)  Discover the “3 potatoes of workplace happiness”: is the key to happiness at work ensuring people are doing “what I do well”, “what I love” and “what is useful”?

33)  Collective objectives: “Individual objectives are bullsh*t. We got people to set collective objectives, to work towards together, and productivity increased by 20%.

34)  Be sexy: “The Belgian Civil Service did a survey of applicants and found that nobody, literally not one person, wanted to work in the Ministry of Social Security. We resolved to become the sexiest place to work in Belgian government.”

35)  Burn the box: “Don’t just think outside the box, burn the box. When we brought in flexible working the receptionists asked if they could work from home. We assumed that wouldn’t work. But they teamed up with some of the admin staff, agreed a shared workload and got to work at home some days of the week. Think differently."

36)  Get rid of the a**holes: "We just wanted team players in the Ministry of Social Security. We asked the a**holes to move to the Finance Ministry."

37)  Freedom + responsibility lead to happiness and performance: “That’s the equation we used to transform the Belgian Ministry of Social Security.”

38)  Kisssify the process: "Keep it sexy, keep it simple, keep it sustainable. If the process or policies don’t fit that, get them changed."

39)  Let your people decide: "As responsible adults we let our team choose: Where. When. How they work."

40)  Happiness at work pays: Productivity rose 20%, rental costs fell by 12 million euro, maintenance costs by 50%, spontaneous applications rose by 500%. Staff turnover fell by 75%

41)  Feelings matter: "How people feel and think determines their behaviour. So focus on making them feel good."

42)  Its about trust: Move from command and control to trust of your people. Your leaders should be facilitators not experts.

Sophie Bryan, previously Director of Workplace Culture, C&C Housing, @Ord_Different

Sophie explained how C&C came to end the HR practice that nobody likes:

43)  Abolish appraisals: They don’t make people happy and don’t serve any useful purpose. “You hear managers saying I’ll feed back at their appraisal in two months time, rather than now when its needed”,

44)  Regular one-to-ones and coaching: Replace appraisals with these, “you move from something nobody likes to something they do”.

45)  Create a coaching culture: 64% of staff say they have more to give at work but nobody has asked them for solutions to the problems at work.

Sarah Gillard, Director of Insight & Assurance, John Lewis partnership

Sarah is sometimes referred to as John Lewis’ Director of Happiness. She explained the different ways of working of this unique company:

46)  Make happiness the “ultimate purpose” of the business: That’s what Spedan Lewis did in the 1920s when he set up the John Lewis Partnership as a workers mutual. With that core focus, the company has grown from 300 staff then to 85,000 now.

47)  Behaviour is contagious: "How I act as a manager has a lot to do with how I’m treated by my manager."

48)  Lots of the best things are free: "Say thank you. Show appreciation. Care for others. Help everybody feel part of the community. These are all free."

49)  Wellbeing of your staff is important: John Lewis had a free at the point of service medical system for its partners (its staff) 20 years before the NHS was created.

50)  Let people think for themselves: John Lewis is looking at how to remove rules, policies, appraisals – to free people up and let them think for themselves.

51)  Share the wealth: John Lewis’ profit share varies between 5% and 15% of annual salary. It can make a real difference to partners. You don’t have to be a mutual to share the profit.

Arlette Bentzen, Chief Happiness Officer, WooHoo, @HappyatWork

Arlette flew over from Copenhagen to tell us about some of the positive work practices in Denmark, one of the happiest nations on Earth.

52)  Create a happiness plan: That’s what the team of happiness ambassadors at Danish insurance company SEB does. Every year, just as you might have a sales plan, they create a plan of how to make SEB happier.

53)  Start each meeting with a positive: That is item zero at every meeting at Lego (“a Danish company you might have heard of”). Participants split into pairs and share something that has gone well. The result is more co-operation and shorter meetings.

54)  Seek arbejdsglaede: Only the Scandinavian have a word for work happiness and this is it in Danish.

55)  Make other people happier: “The science is clear: Making other people happy makes you happier too.”

Thank you to all the speakers for great ideas, great examples and generally being fabulous. For another view, check out Nikki Gattenby’s post:

“We must have talked to at least 90% of the people in the room with the mix of speed networking, speaker questions for table discussions, break-out sessions and quick-fire breaks. If anyone is putting on a conference in the near future, have a chat with team Happy, I’m sure they would help you elevate the day and enable every attendee to come away raving about it.”

A hgue thanks indeed to the Happy Team: Lydia, Claire, John, Simone, Fenella, Suzi. And to our great MC, Happy's Maureen Egbe.

Want to borrow our conference methodology? Feel free, its detailed here.

2019 Happy Workplace Conference: 13th June

Put the date in your diary now. I guarantee you will leave inspired …. and happy!

Note: All images are from Andy De Vale. Twitter ID: @AndyDeVale.