How John Lewis Puts the Happiness of its Staff at the Core of its Business
John Lewis Partnership has been experimenting with how to make people happy for a century. Its founder, John Spedan Lewis, was driven to create a workplace that functioned so that all parts of the ecosystem were in balance and worked to improve the whole.
Sarah Gillard joined the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership in 2010 as Head of Merchandising for John Lewis Furniture. She then worked as Head of Strategy before taking on the role of Director, Insight and Assurance within the Personnel function in 2017. Speaking at the 2018 Happy Workplaces Conference, Sarah explains how the Partnership goes about achieving its ultimate purpose: securing the happiness of all its members.
How to Make 85,000 People Happy, According to John Lewis
Keeping 85,000 people happy at work is an imposing task. After experimenting with how to make people happy for 100 years, John Lewis has learnt that not everyone finds happiness in the same places. Sarah Gillard discovered how to navigate this challenge in her role as the Director, Insight and Assurance within the Personnel function at the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership.
In this two-minute video from the 2018 Happy Workplaces conference, Sarah offers three tips derived from the company’s decades of experimentation.
