This year’s conference was Happy’s first hybrid event, hosted in the classroom at Happy’s HQ in London and online via Zoom. We had a fantastic line up as always, with speakers including Isaac Getz, Michele Zanini, Caron Bradshaw OBE and Michelle Hill.

Following the success of preceding years, the 2023 conference was held entirely via Zoom with over 150 delegates joining the virtual event.

We were grateful to have talks from insightful and innovative speakers such as Bjarte Bognses of Beyond Budgeting, Arnauld Collery of Stand Up For Passion and Rachel Law of PossAbilities.

Featuring talks from some of the world’s best workplaces, including the John Lewis Partnership, Kingfisher PLC and Propellernet, the 2018 Happy Workplaces Conference was the perfect place to learn about how to create a great workplace.

Featuring talks from representatives of Webmart, Happy and many more, the Happy Workplaces CEO Conference was for Chief Executives who wanted to get away from traditional top-down, hierarchical organisations, and instead shift their businesses into high-trust, high-autonomy and high-performance teams.

Happy and engaged workplaces are more profitable, have a higher share growth, and lower costs. Teams have higher staff retention, less sickness and are more productive. But how can you create this happy workplace culture in your workplace?

Many guest speakers came together to discuss answers to this question in our 2017 conference.

At this one day conference, organised by Happy and hosted by the National Audit Office, attendees discovered about change coming to the public sector – and learnt how to create that culture in their organisation. With speakers from the National Audit Office, GCHQ, Government Digital Service and Monmouthshire County Council, they learnt how to implement ideas such as freedom within a framework, how to help staff to work to their strengths, and create workplaces based on trust to lead to better service for the public.

This was Happy’s third Beyond Budgeting Conference in partnership with the Beyond Budgeting Institute, held at Happy’s training centre in Aldgate. Speakers included Anders Olesen of Beyond Budgeting Institute, Bjarte Bogsnes of Statoil, Mira Gvozdenovic of Coloplast, Chris Hannay and Kevin McCoy at Next Jump, and John Seddon of Vanguard Consulting.

At Happy Workplaces 2016, we welcomed John Housego of WL Gore (makers of Goretex), who explained how Gore has created an award-winning international company through its trust-based leadership. Simon Perriton of Just IT, Philippa Ward of Global Action Plan and Valentina Culatti of UNIT9 each explained how they had used the principles of The Happy Manifesto to create their happy, successful workplaces, while Shannon Banks spoke about the importance of connection in the workplace. Finally, Tarun and Henry explained how Next Jump operates with a ‘no fire’ policy.

This event was co-hosted with Epic CIC.

At this event we heard from June O’Sullivan with ideas about how to keep your staff happy, Brendan O’Keefe of Epic with advice on hiring for attitude and how to re-motivate staff, and lessons from the private sector from Dom Monkhouse of iomart. Rekha Mehr of MassChallenge UK and Dr Sally Howes of the NAO also spoke about the struggles of creating change in the public sector, and how they have sparked innovation and change within their respective organisations.

Held in partnership with the Beyond Budgeting Institute, this event demonstrated that the Beyond Budgeting philosophy is a holistic and coherent management model. Speakers included John Seddon, occupational psychologist, researcher and global authority on management change; Andy Copsey, Chief Operating Officer of Handelsbanken in the UK; Julian Birkinshaw from the London Business School; Jesper Kruger of AP Moller Maersk; and Ulrich Gammelgaard of Velux.

At this exciting event, our speakers shared how they have built and sustained happy workplace culture and practices, in line with the principles of the Happy Manifesto. Speakers included Simon Fowler, Board Director at John Lewis, Stuart Jones, Communications and Customer Service Director at CarillionAmey, Brendan O’Keefe, Managing Director at Epic CIC, and Shannon Banks, Director at Be Leadership and former HR Director at Microsoft.

This interactive event was hosted at Google’s offices in London, and featured two speakers from Google – Jennifer Kelly, Global Head of Real Estate, and Yvonne Agyei, Head of Benefits. Other speakers included Julian Birkinshaw of the London Business School, Tansy Drake and Tim Dorsett of Innocent, and Kate Grimes, CEO of Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

This was our first ever Happy Workplaces Conference. The conference was hosted by Google at their London Victoria HQ with over 80 attendees. It featured speakers from Google, Cougar Software and Action for Happiness, as well as Marion Jenner, Nigel Paine and Dom Monkhouse.