I am proud to announce one of my most exciting projects ever: I’m teaming up with HP to make small and medium sized companies in the UK happy at work.

The project is officially launching today, and up till now I’ve been under strict orders not to reveal anything. Finally, I can blog about it!!

From the press release (pdf):

As part of its ongoing ‘Happy People’ marketing campaign, HP will be providing free consultancy to UK businesses on how to improve ‘happiness’ within the office through the use of HP mobility technology.

At the same time, HP has launched a nationwide competition for small to medium-sized businesses, giving them the chance to win a £10,000 office makeover – including HP products, ‘happiness’ workshops and free consultancy from an independent expert and an HP team of experts.
…
“We’re absolutely thrilled to be working with Alexander, one of the world’s leading experts on happiness in the workforce,” said David Wright, vice president and general manager of HP Personal Systems Group, UK & Ireland. “Over the coming months, HP will be addressing the areas where technology can help make some offices throughout the UK happier places to work.”

The idea is that HP’s mobile products (laptops and mobile phones) allow us to work more flexibly – and flexibility, ie. having more choice over when and where to work, makes us happier at work.

The main elements of the campaign are:

• A campaign website with tips on how to make yourself and your workplace happy
• Appearances in UK media by yours truly
• A staff satisfaction survey
• A contest for small UK-based companies

I’m especially excited about the contest. UK-based companies with 100 employees or less can sign up and the grand prize is an office makeover by HP and a full-day happiness workshop with yours truly! Four other companies get the runner up prize: Full-day workshops with me.

So if you’re working in a small UK business and you’d like a little more happiness at work, go to the campaign website and sign your workplace up. Right now!

I’m incredidbly happy to be a part of this project. First of all because it gels so well with my take on happiness at work; giving employees their freedom is a prerequisite for happiness at work, as I also wrote in my book.

Secondly, my talks with HP have convinced me that they are genuinely committed to happiness at work. This is not just a PR exercise for them – this is about creating more happiness and thus more success for HP’s customers.

And finally, this gives me a great opportunity to work with some UK companies for the first time. It’s funny that I’ve been hired by companies in America, Estonia, Croatia and India (just to mention a few of the places I’ve gone recently) – but none in the UK so far…

So all in all, a great project with the potential to create a lot of happiness at work.

Full disclosure: HP are paying me to participate in media activities related to this project and to do the workshops for the winning companies.

Related:

• Is flexibility at work good or bad?
• Best Buy introduces ROWE – the Results Only Work Environment
• The world’s most flexible workplace: Semco – where employees set their own work times and choose their own salary