Brendan O’Keefe, Epic CIC – Advice for re-motivating staff
Brendan was the last speaker of the day, and is Managing Director of Epic CIC. On 1st January 2014, Epic moved away from Royal Borough of Kensington’s Youth Support and Development Service, becoming the UK’s first youth service employee-led mutual. Brendan and his team worked with Happy to create an exciting and happy workplace.
Brendan discussed the challenges involved in this new way of working – including giving staff pre-approval to make decisions, removing triangulation from the workplace, and recruiting for attitude.
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Pre-approval was an idea Brendan took from Henry’s Happy Manifesto, and he admits that it was difficult – particularly when the first decision made through the pre-approval system, was coming up with the new name! However, he says “when you give a team a task and the responsibility, they do it really well.”
You can read more about how Happy worked with Epic CIC in Henry’s Blog.
Click here to download Brendan’s PowerPoint presentation (PDF).
Claire Lickman
Claire is Head of Marketing at Happy. She has worked at Happy since 2016, and is responsible for Happy's marketing strategy, website, social media and more. Claire first heard about Happy in 2012 when she attended a mix of IT and personal development courses. These courses were life-changing and she has been a fan of Happy ever since. She has a personal blog at lecari.co.uk.
Next Conference: 2023 Happy Workplaces Conference
Our Happy Workplaces Conference is our biggest event of the year — and we're excited to announce that it will be back for 2023. Save the date for 15th June 2023!
Due to the success of previous years, we will be holding this event online via Zoom. As always, this event will include lots of discussion and interaction, with the opportunity to meet others who are on their journey to create happy workplaces.
Our speakers will be announced early next year. Previous speakers have included leadership gurus Tom Peters, David Marquet, Liz Wiseman and Bruce Daisley — as well as Andrew Barnes, author of The 4 Day Week, Helen Sanderson MBE, Professor Donna Hall CBE, and Pim de Morre of Corporate Rebels. We've had speakers from organisations such as John Lewis, WL Gore, Buurtzorg, Woohoo inc, Propellernet, Mayden, Next Jump, Foundation SP, Epic CiC, the National Audit Office, and more.
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