Book review: Happy People Sell

Nev Wilshire is boss of the Save Britain Money group and star of BBC series The Call Centre. This book tells us of his rise from a modest background in Wales to becoming a highly successful businessman with a company that has a £50 million (€59 million) turnover and 600 staff.

Much of the book is about how Wilshire creates a party atmosphere at work and the unusual HR techniques he employs which have included interviewing a prospective employee while standing on his desk. To add to the sense of mischief he includes copies of notes from his HR director warning him not to mention some of the more unconventional practices he employs after he has revealed full details of these to readers.

Wilshire acknowledges the happy clappy environment he has created can lead to employees “taking the pi**”, as he calls it. You need to set out the parameters and if employees cross the line, they need firstly to be gently nudged and if that doesn’t work they need to be “slapped”, he says.

While many readers will find Wilshire crass and overbearing, there is a lot of common sense in here and, given the success of his company, it obviously works.