Happy & Productive workplaces – interview with Henry Stewart
Henry Stewart is the founder and Chief Executive of London-based training business Happy Ltd. Happy was rated one of the top 20 workplaces in the UK for 5 successive years and now helps other organisations create happy workplaces. In the interview above he talks to Eszter Molnar Mills about happy workplaces, no-blame culture and how freedom and trust can increase productivity in organisations.
When asked about the ‘Happy difference’ Stewart said that they start from a basic principle, that people work best when they feel good about themselves, so encouraging this is the managers’ key role. As a great example he cites John Lewis, one of the most respected businesses in the UK, lauded for its excellent customer service. A focus on employee wellbeing is rooted in the worker-owned company’s constitution. When Spedan Lewis established the store as a workers mutual in the 1930s, he included in the constitution that every decision had to be based on increasing the happiness of its staff. They built a hugely successful company explains Stewart. What could focussing on employee happiness do for you if it’s had such benefits for John Lewis?
Henry mentions a company where ‘being as happy as Denmark’ is the target. The key is making people feel good about themselves, which is deeper than trivial approaches to promoting happiness.
So, if you want your organisation to be ‘as happy as Denmark’:
- Make sure people do what they really good at (Gallup data suggests that only 17% are doing what they’re best at every day.)
- Give them purpose
- Build trust and give autonomy
For building autonomy, Stewart says they advocate pre-approval at Happy. It means that managers approve the solution before it is proposed. You as a manager give very clear guidelines but leave your people to come up with their own solutions.
Creating a no-blame culture is also important, as is celebrating and learning from mistakes and the crucial role of the manager as coach.
“The most effective behaviour of managers is to be a coach.” – says Henry Stewart.
“Help your people with their thinking, help them work things out. Don’t focus on what went wrong or tell them what to do. Instead of that ask them what’s going well, what support they need” – he advises.
Some of Happy’s more controversial practices include allowing staff to choose their own managers and creating non-management promotion tracks for those whose strengths lie elsewhere. But before you dismiss these suggestions as a step too far, Stewart highlights that when it comes to business results, there are clear links between how much freedom and autonomy employees have and their productivity. There are also clear links between the levels of happiness in an organisation, how good a workplace it is and the success of the company.
Wharton Business School’s Alex Edmans’ detailed econometric survey looked at how companies in the Fortune Best Place to Work list fared when compared to the stock market as a whole. He found that if you had invested a pension fund in the best places to work, that portfolio would have been worth 238% of the equivalent in the standard stock market due to the additional productivity and success of those companies.
To create happy and productive workplaces, Henry Stewart suggests:
- Get people to do what they good at
- Give them trust and freedom
- Make them happy and support them with coaching
To find out more about Henry Stewart’s work creating happy workplaces, get insights and hear about his experiences as a leader and more, watch the interview above.
Henry Stewart is founder and Chief Executive of London-based training business Happy Ltd. Happy was rated one of the top 20 workplaces in the UK for 5 successive years and now helps other organisations create happy workplaces. In 2011 Henry was listed in the Guru Radar of the Thinkers 50 list of the most influential business thinkers in the world. “He is one of the thinkers who we believe will shape the future of business”, explained list compiler Stuart Crainer. His book, The Happy Manifesto, was published by Kogan Page in January 2013.
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