This great blog post by Henry Stewart of Happy Ltd. is full of practical tips for creating a happier workplace.
The Happy Manifesto sets out a vision of happier workplaces. It is based on what organisations might look like if how they were organised and managed was decided by the people who are managed. What does this mean in practice? Here is a first draft of 80 or so ideas for people to try out.
Downloadable Version
Ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions very welcome. Check out the Happy Manifesto LinkedIn group or email me at henry@happy.co.uk. Also do checkout the LinkedIn discussion. Or download the Happy Manifesto:
list version: 1.0
Basics
1. Find a way to delight a customer today
2. Find a way to delight one of your people today
3. Stop to say hello to colleagues and get to know them better
4. Find ways to make working together more fun and sociable
Trust your people
5. Pre-approve: A new approach, a problem to solve – get an individual or group to find a solution and then implement it without checking back with you
Pre-Approve It! — Delivering Happiness
6. Don’t approve things: And resist the temptation to “improve” your people’s ideas
7. Give people the freedom to choose their own paths to achieving results
8. Ensure there are clear principles to work within
9. Ensure there are clear objectives to work towards & people feel they own them and are fully accountable for them
10. Once they have job ownership, hold people to account & be tough with underperformance
11. Help your people set up regular feedback, from the customer
12. Get managers to step out of the way
13. Stop telling people what to do
14. Pass the knowledge on to your people, so they don’t need things approved
15. Have your people write their own job descriptions
16. Let people choose their own job title (or abolish job titles altogether)
17. Encourage disobedience
18. Give full power and responsibility to front-line staff to change anything that is wrong
19. Let people spend 10% of their paid time doing something of their own initiative (Google: 20%)
20. Take real responsibility in your job. Lead beyond your authority
21. Peer appraisal: have every person appraised by their peers, their fellow workers. (You survive and prosper by what your colleagues think of you)
22. Set any rules for the 98% trying to do a good job, not the 2% who aren’t
23. Let people decide their own salaries (Semco)
24. Let people choose which two colleagues should assess their salary (St Lukes)
Make your people feel good
Focus On Making Your Staff Happy — Delivering Happiness
25. In every interaction with others, make it a goal to leave them feeling good
Why Getting Personal Works At Work — Delivering Happiness
26. Don’t treat people as you would want to be treated, treat them as they would want to be treated (especially if you are a manager)
27. Give your people £25 each (or even just £10) to make the office better in some way
28. Allow everybody to spend £100 (or even £500), without needing approval, to make something better for a customer
29. Spot somebody doing something well and tell them
30. Thank two people today
31. Make it the key role for management to make people feel good about themselves
32. Smile!
33. Find opportunities to laugh together
34. Surprise people with cakes or ice cream
How To Treat Employees At Work — Delivering Happiness
35. Make the focus of your managers to serve their people
36. Redraw your organisation chart as an upside-down pyramid: Put the managers at the bottom and the front-line staff at the top
37. Reward and promote as much on how supportive and helpful people are, as on their ability in their core job
38. Make appraisals something supportive, that people look forward to
39. Help your people find a real challenge, and support them to achieve it
40. Create a quiet space, where an individual’s presence is trusted, respected and allowed to just be for a while.
41. Pause and look up and recognise the beauty around us
42. Ask your people what would make them happier. Then enable it.
43. Make a habit of noting good things that happen each day
Be open and transparent
44. Err on the side of sharing more information than people need
45. Make all information in the organisation available for everybody to see (excepting only the really personal stuff)
46. Especially make the finances open, and train people how to understand them
47. Make salaries open and transparent too, so your people can see what everybody earns
Recruit for attitude, train for skill
48. Forget the qualifications, check the ability instead
49. Ban the use of non-specific qualifications in recruitment (eg, “must have a degree”)
50. Test their ability to do the job, not their ability to talk about doing the job
51. Involve the people they will work with in the recruitment. Get buy-in before they start. Get them to spend a day in the office, and get the people they will work with to decide whether to appoint (Pret)
52. Especially for managers, have them principally chosen by the people they will manage
53. Let your people leave well, help them find a new job and leave them feeling good
54. Look for the potential in all your people, even the lowest paid
Celebrate mistakes
55. Ensure there is no blame for trying something new and messing up
56. Make a point of warmly praising/celebrating when people own up to things that went wrong
57. Hold a staff meeting where everybody declares a mistake they’ve made, to cheers from everybody else.
58. Be prepared to say “I got it wrong. That was my fault”
59. Create environments where people can experiment, try new things and succeed or – safely – fail
Community: create mutual benefit
60. Ensure your organisation has a purpose beyond profit
61. Create an environment where people feel really proud to work there.
62. What skills and resources does your organisation have, that could bring real benefit to others?
63. Check everything your organisation does, not just the 1% to charity, against the benchmark of whether it helps society
64. Pay your suppliers early, especially the sol traders and small businesses
65. Reduce your environmental impact, a little more each year
Love work, get a life
66. Set an example of working to your hours, and taking time off
67. Help your people work to their hours and avoid a long hours culture. Your customers want your people relaxed, well rested and nourished
68. Equip and help people to work at home, if they want to
69. Get great at helping people measure their productivity, so they are judged on what they produce not the time spent producing it
70. Remember that people’s best ideas rarely come at the office, help them have wide experiences
71. Let your people work out the way of working that suits them, agreed with their colleagues
72. Help your people find ‘me’ time, to do what they really enjoy
73. Give yourself ‘me’ time: what do you really enjoy doing?
Select who should manage people on the basis of how good they are at managing people
A Common Sense Approach to Management — Delivering Happiness
74. Have every manager appraised by the people they manage
75. Help people who want to, to become great people managers. Help those who don’t want to, to do what they are good at
76. Find a way for some people to get promoted without having to manage people
77. Encourage people to call meetings with managers when they want them, not the other way round
78. Let people choose their managers
Let People Choose Their Managers — Delivering Happiness
Get people to play to their strengths
79. Focus on developing your people’s strengths, more than addressing weaknesses
80. Get people to spend their time doing what they are good at
henry@happy.co.uk
Useful Links
Action for Happiness on the route to a happier workplace
Happier workplaces are better for people and for business
Download the Happy Manifesto
Great video from Shawn Anchor, author of The Happiness Advantage:
Shawn Anchor: The happy secret to better work | Video on TED.com
Article written by Henry Stewart
Posted by Shona Lockhart on 30th April 2013
