[New Release] Happy Manifesto... 'If You Feel Employees Are Not Working'

"Disclose Everyone's Salary" "Encourage Disobedience" "Celebrate Mistakes"

[Asia Economy Reporter Cho Young-joo] “Happy discloses all salary information. Everyone knows who earns how much. Not only the current salary but also the total salary received since joining the company is disclosed. Of course, my own salary is also made public.”

Henry Stewart is the founder of the UK-based education specialist company ‘Happy.’ He is also the company’s Chief Happiness Officer (CHO). This company has no CEO. Instead, the CHO leads ‘happiness management.’ Happy has been selected as the ‘Best Workplace in the UK’ by the Financial Times for five consecutive years.

is a book that condenses the theory and practice of happiness management centered on people. The author, Henry Stewart, says, “The most dramatic changes begin when organizations trust their employees and employees work freely.” He incorporates the management philosophy he has spread over 30 years to various corporate and public institution executives and workers. In particular, he organizes and introduces the on-site cases of happiness management actively implemented by global companies such as Happy, Microsoft, Google, Semco, and W.L. Gore into ten principles. It provides management ideas along with 100 questions, from systems that drive employee productivity to ways to create workplaces that maximize performance, from techniques for selecting and managing talent well to becoming flexible managers who are not afraid of innovation.

‘Post-Corona’ Working Styles Will Also Change

The unprecedented economic crisis triggered by the spread of COVID-19 has dealt a blow to many companies. A new normal has emerged in the work environment. It is time to establish new standards for working methods.

The organizational culture of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is very similar to typical companies in Korea. There is a clear hierarchy, management is at the center of decision-making, and multi-level approval processes must be followed when undertaking any task. However, as COVID-19 spread, the NHS realized that the old management methods could not cope and delegated all responsibility to frontline staff. As managers stepped back, hospital staff including doctors and nurses began to solve tasks that used to take six months or a year within days or weeks, quickly finding and implementing the most efficient treatment methods.

Don’t Let Employees’ Ideas Stay on Managers’ Desks

Whether there is one employee or a thousand, organizations put the greatest effort into securing talent. Yet employees do not work passionately within the organization. As Gary Hamel, professor at London Business School, said, 79% of employees are physically present at work but leave their passion and talent at home. This is a huge waste for both organizations and employees. However, the author calls this an ‘opportunity.’ If an environment is created where 79% of employees can immerse themselves in work, productivity will soar and innovation will accelerate.

The first of the ten principles in the Happy Manifesto is ‘Trust employees so they can work enthusiastically.’ It views authoritarianism and hierarchical order as the biggest obstacles to flexible innovation in organizations and recommends abolishing multi-level approval processes first. Instead, it delegates all decision-making authority to the frontline while giving prior approval. In fact, at Happy, employees choose their managers. When most people can choose good managers themselves and take ownership of their work, life becomes happier and productivity increases.

Encourage Disobedience and Celebrate Mistakes

Companies recognized as ‘happy workplaces’ such as Happy, Microsoft, and Google focus on the fact that “people work best when they feel respected.” Beyond fulfilling basic needs such as communication, rewards, workplace safety, and stability, they manage with a focus on satisfying higher-level needs such as trust, freedom, support, and challenge. They expand flexible working systems to balance work and life and grant freedom to work to the best of their ability within clear guidelines. They reduce unnecessary rules and celebrate mistakes.

According to cases and research results from these companies, the benefits of a happy workplace that fulfills higher-level needs are broad and clear. Highly motivated employees voluntarily think about and implement ways to improve customer satisfaction. Turnover rates are low, and sick leave is rare. Hiring employees is also easier. Ultimately, this leads to high organizational growth rates and profitability.

Google’s second-largest revenue source, AdSense, was born from ‘disobedience.’ Google engineer Paul Buchheit developed ‘contextual advertising’ that displays ads based on email content but had to give up due to opposition from Google co-founder Sergey Brin. However, Paul only pretended to give up and ultimately completed it. Another co-founder, Larry Page, praised this and encouraged employees’ challenges. Paul’s decision to go against company guidelines has brought Google billions of dollars in annual revenue.

When Employees Are Happy, Performance Naturally Follows

Microsoft has no ‘good-performing’ managers, only managers who ‘manage employees well.’ They do not promote employees simply because they have worked long or have been evaluated as good at their tasks. Instead, employees who perform well are given special roles and status so they can focus only on what they do best. “The criterion for selecting managers for employees is how well they manage people.”

offers various management ideas that can simply change working methods. From transparently disclosing all employees’ salaries to a ‘no-blame’ culture that does not criticize mistakes, delegating all decision-making authority to the frontline after providing guidelines, hiring based on attitude rather than education or experience, to systems where employees decide their working hours, goals, and even their managers?there are many innovative ideas that readers might wonder, “Is this really possible in Korea?” Of course, it is not just theoretical. It is full of empirical cases showing what many companies have practiced for employee happiness and the effects achieved. It provides sufficient insight to overcome the limits between demands for change and Korean organizational culture.

Translator Kang Young-chul = After joining Maeil Business Newspaper as a reporter, he served as the general director of the ‘Vision Korea National Report Conference’ and founding secretary-general of the World Knowledge Forum. Later, he worked as president of Pulmuone’s overseas division and director of the Regulatory Coordination Office at the Prime Minister’s Office. In 1995, he earned Korea’s first overseas doctorate in this field with a thesis on ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ from the University of Pittsburgh. Currently, he lectures at Hanyang University’s Department of Science and Technology Policy and KDI (Korea Development Institute) Graduate School of International Policy, while co-leading the Happy Workplace Lab as co-representative.