Humanity Above Bureaucracy: How Buurtzorg Reinvented Dutch Home Care

Brendan Martin of UK organisation Public World was serving as the principal carer for his mum when he noticed that UK home care organisations weren't just typically underfunded, but also managed in counterproductive ways. He's been working in collaboration with Dutch home care organisation Buurtzorg to improve home care in the UK. Madelon van Tilburg has been at Buurtzorg since 2011. Buurtzorg differs from her previous employers in that it lets nurses exercise freedom and responsibility in the job they’re trained for. Brendan and Madelon spoke at the 2017 Happy Workplaces Conference about how Buurtzorg reinvented Dutch home care and how the same could be done in the UK.

How to build a profitable business based on Servant Leadership

‘Can the employee and employer serve each other for the greater good – while still being a profitable business?’, asked Simon Lawson in his Masters dissertation. And at Lawsons, a family business that supplies building materials to the London area, Simon has achieved that.

Could a 4 Day Week Work in Your Sector? Yes!

At Happy we are engaged in the UK four-day working week pilot, with 70 UK companies testing the idea from June to November 2022. We've had huge interest, with my blogs on LinkedIn getting up to 10 times as many views as my other posts. But some respond by saying that it wouldn’t work in their sector. So I was very interested to read the book Shorter: How Smart Companies Work Less, Embrace Flexibility and Boost Productivity by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. This gives a whole range of examples from different sectors.

Creating Happy, Engaged Workplaces in a Traditional Industry

Gemma Beadle, the HR Manager at Advanced Technology Services UK, has a passion for wellbeing in the workplace. Joined by ATS Site Manager, Damien O’Neill, Gemma spoke at the 2017 Happy Workplaces conference about ATS’s achievements in creating a happy workplace. Read the transcript and watch the full video here.

18 months ago things were not looking good at Happy. In 2017, we made a loss of £180k. Rather than cutting costs, we took a look at our culture and values, and transformed the business. Here’s how we did it.

7 ways to find more meaning at work

Elinor Schmitz-Jansen is studying for an MSc in Management at Imperial College. She is currently working at Happy, researching academic studies of happiness and meaning in work. This is her first report:

New Features Added to Office 365 in July 2020

New features are regularly added to Microsoft Office 365’s assorted apps to improve user experience. These updates are so frequent that even regular 365 users won’t necessarily be aware of all the new additions. In July 2020, this included allowing users to control their PowerPoint presentation using Microsoft's Surface Earbuds. Find out more about this and the other newly added features in this blog.

Reddico's Journey into a Self-Managing Organisation

Inspired by the Happy Manifesto, Reddico started the move to becoming self-managing in March 2018. In just 18 months it has resulted in happier employees, more satisfied customers, higher revenue and a big increase in profits. Henry Stewart spoke to Head of Operations Luke Kyte to learn how Reddico achieved this.

Why are the right charts in Excel so important? The wrong Excel chart can not only lead to confusion but may lead to the wrong decisions being made. Which should you use? Happy's expert trainer Darren Andrews explains more in this blog.

Happy Receives Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award 2024

Happy is proud to announce that we won the Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award, an independent seal of excellence, which recognises businesses that consistently deliver a world-class customer experience.

Happy wins Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award 2025

Happy has won the Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award 2025 — an independent seal of excellence, based on customer reviews on the Feefo platform. In 2024, Happy received almost 200 reviews with an average rating of 4.7. This is the fifth consecutive year that Happy has won the award, which is every year we have been eligible — a huge achievement!

Google: Hire Great People and Give Them Lots of Autonomy

At the Happy Workplace 2013 conference Yvonne Agyei (Google Head of Benefits) explained how Google creates happy and healthy Googlers.

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. Speaking at the 2018 Happy Workplaces Conference, Sarah Gillard explains how the John Lewis Partnership goes about achieving its ultimate purpose: securing the happiness of all its members.

Supercharge Your Teamwork With Superengagement

What would life be like if your employees were so engaged that work didn’t feel like work?