Here you can find all of Happy’s blog posts, covering our Excel hints and tips, ideas for creating happy workplaces, and ways to be more productive at work — and more.
Everyone is talking about AI at the moment, and it can be daunting. Whether you’re completely new to terms like ‘Large Language Model’ and ‘GPT’, or you just want to ensure that you know how to get the most out of the available tools, Happy is here to help. In this blog, Ben demystifies some of the riddles of AI and explains how it can be used to help you in your day to day work.
“Your Level 7 Senior Leadership apprenticeship is absolutely brilliant,” says Jason Michell of TypeFi. “One of the best things I’ve done in the last decade. It’s the best money I’ve never spent.” The Level 7 Senior Leadership programme is paid for from the Apprenticeship Levy if you have over £3 million in payroll. If not, the government pays 95% of it, so your organisation pays just £700 for a two-year leadership programme with monthly workshops and regular coaching.
We all want to get the most out of our data – to really dig deep into the numbers so we can make informed business decisions. How do you find new opportunities? How do you know where to divert your resources? In Excel, this can be a minefield – having to copy and paste data from different sources, then tweak it so it displays correctly, and then running dozens of functions to get the right information. And that's not counting on the time needed to then create graphs and charts so that you can visualise it and spot trends! What if there was an easier way? In this blog, Ben explains how Power BI can help you to create these reports quickly and easily.
“Leadership is a term, much like ‘strategy’, that is misused and misunderstood. I don’t believe that being a leader is about being the CEO, hierarchy, wielding power and control or having all the answers. Yet leaders can have a hard time breaking out of the traditional concepts of leadership and embracing a different approach. And others fail to recognise their own leadership qualities considering themselves too junior or lacking that leadership ‘title’,” says Caron Bradshaw OBE.
Learn how to use Absolute Cell References in Microsoft Excel in this time-saving two minute video.
"In every aspect of our lives — in politics, in economics, in entertainment, and in family life — we demand the freedom to decide matters for ourselves. And yet when it comes to our work lives, far too many people are stifled, constrained, hemmed in, and tied down by bureaucracy and rules that have nothing to do with allowing them to do the best they can in their jobs. These constraints leave people feeling out of control of their work lives, which, in turn, leads to stress, fatigue, and disengagement from work."
Find out from Henry Stewart how you can create a workplace culture based on trust by using Pre-Approval. In this 30-minute video, recorded from his live session on 10th April, Henry gives examples from Happy and from Netflix about how Pre-Approval has been used in practice. He also hears from people attending and how Pre-Approval could work in their organisation, and what the barriers are to using it.
"We're a relationship charity, and we want to invest as much time in our team and their relationships at work as we do with our clients," says Michelle Hill, CEO of TLC: Talk, Listen, Change. "We want them to have a workplace where they feel valued and where they want to do their best work. I think the more we invest in wellbeing and the team being happier, the better the results are."
While some may fear AI replacing jobs, the reality is far more nuanced. The key is to develop the skills to use AI effectively or else risk being displaced by those who do. Learning to properly prompt AI systems will soon become an essential competency for professionals in almost every sector.
XLOOKUP is a new feature in the latest version of Excel. It means you'll no longer need to use either VLOOKUP or Index and Match, as it's a much more powerful and accurate tool. It also allows you to use Wildcard characters such as * or ?, which means you can match parts of a string or account for misspellings. In this two minute video, Gill explains how to use XLOOKUP with an example scenario.