At Independents United we like to think that we’re revolutionary in our thinking. How are we revolutionary? We put our happiness above everything else — above how profitable we are as business, how many awards we win and how big our salaries are.

We’re all co-owners and our aim is to let everyone live the life they really want to live, by being in charge of our own destinies and collectively steering the company in the direction we want it to take. Our overarching aim is to be happy 99%* of the time. (*We’re realistic, we know that people can’t be happy all of the time.)

So here are six ways that we put happiness above profit at IU:

1. We actively turn down work that will make people unhappy.

Sometimes we get offered work that would pay handsomely but isn’t necessarily something that floats our collective boat, or is something that we actively disagree with. If it’s not going to fulfil people and working on it will make people unhappy, we just won’t do it.

Conversely…

2. We allow people to work on ‘passion projects’ that don’t significantly add to our profits.

We believe in encouraging people to work on the projects that make them happy — whether that’s working with a small startup, a brand they love or even developing one of their own ideas. These projects may not pay as well as some of our other ones, but they help us develop as people, add to our company experience and most of all, make us want to come to work on a Monday morning.

3. We let dogs into the office.

When Polly got a dog we discussed as a team whether she could bring it in to work — and voted with a resounding ‘yes’. Schnitzel the sausage dog now happily spends half her days at IU, sleeping on laps, charming clients and doing a bit of design work. What does Schnitzel bring to the company? She’s increasing our collective happiness: 95% of people at IU said that their happiness had increased since having a dog around (5% are clearly cat lovers).

4. We work around our family lives.

When Nick and his wife had their first baby in 2012, the company gave him two weeks fully paid paternity leave instead of the one week legally required. That’s a good start. But when his wife went back to work at the start of 2013 and Nick wanted to go down to four day weeks to spend a day with his daughter, the teams he works with agreed that this was fine and wouldn’t overly affect ongoing work in ways that we couldn’t get around (we can’t seem to stop Nick checking his email and being in touch on non-work days, but that’s his choice).

5. We let people take a break when they need it.

This year David announced that he was hoping to take a six month trip travelling around South America. In response, IU developed a sabbatical policy to allow him to take a break and come back refreshed and (hopefully) fluent in Spanish in 2016. And because it’s now a policy, other people may take advantage of it in the future too.

6. We recognise and reward people who are ’the dog’s bollocks’.

We like to give people the space and freedom to explore their personal passions in and out of work and that’s why we have a monthly prize pot of £100 to be spent on doing something the winner loves or wants to learn about. The prize is awarded to the person who’s gone above and beyond in displaying our shared values that month — they’re truly ‘the dog’s bollocks’. We’ve seen people spend the money on flower arranging classes, singing lessons, theatre tickets and even a circus skills workshop (we thought there was enough clowning around in the office already, but apparently not…)

Happiness and life ambition are two of the principal things that shape IU as a company. There’s no overriding HR team to say yes or no; we talk to one another honestly about what will work and what won’t and we trust each other implicitly not to take the piss.

And you know what? It works really well.