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The Business of Being BrilliantAuthor: Helen Beedham
Organisational expert Helen Beedham explores the human side of work. She talks to business leaders, academics, authors and other experts about whats helped them to work at their best and how we can create organisations where everyone can flourish. Tune in for some honest reflections, some wise advice and a host of practical suggestions to help you and your business succeed. Find the show notes at www.helenbeedham.com. Language: en-gb Genres: Business, Management Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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S11 Ep 03: How to inject fun into work with Alys Martin
Episode 3
Sunday, 15 February, 2026
Is fun at work a nice-to-have or a must-have? In this episode, Helen Beenham sits down with Group HR Director and people leader Alys Martin to explore how organisations can create a culture of authentic, inclusive fun and why it matters more than ever in high-pressure work environments.Drawing from her strategic HR experience in tech, engineering, and publishing, Alys shares practical wisdom on why laughter and levity are vital for mental health, boosting team engagement, and creating genuine bonds at work. Helen and Alys discuss:⭐️ Why fun needs to be authentic and driven by teams, not imposed from the top-down ⭐️ How “forced fun” and how exclusive social activities can inadvertently leave people out ⭐️ Why fun can be “emotional oxygen” and how it helps people break up serious, stressful days and recover resilience ⭐️The best ways for leaders to humanise their role, build trust, and show vulnerability ⭐️ Tips on how leaders can read the room and ensure fun doesn’t end up hurting or excluding anyone ⭐️ Why fun isn’t always frivolous and how a few minutes of laughter can restore perspective and balance in tough times.About Alys Martin: Alys Martin is a strategic people leader with a passion for culture, reward, change and all the messy, beautiful, frustrating complexity of how people work together.She helps organisations to navigate growth, ambiguity, or reinvention and designs people practices that are thoughtful, effective, and rooted in real-life human experience. Alys is currently Group HR Director at Terrapin, was previously People Director at what3words and has held other senior HR roles in technology, engineering and publishing in organisations at different stages of growth and maturity. She describes herself, delightfully, as a fan of occasional nonsense and word games.Order Helen’s new business book, the Amazon Bestseller People Glue: hold on to your best people by setting them free. Help others to discover it too by leaving a book review and/or rating here.Download free retention tools from Helen’s website here, including the Freedom Index and 8 ways to diagnose your retention risks. Listen to Helen’s special podcast episode about People Glue with guest host, CEO and tech entrepreneur Jen Sundberg. Discover Helen’s award-winning first business book The Future of Time: how ‘re-working’ time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing. Browse the reviews or rate it/post your own review here. Join Helen’s mailing list here.Follow Helen on LinkedIn and Instagram.(Tip: click the bell icon on the top right of her Linked In profile to automatically see all her posts in your feed.) Amy Edmondson’s post on Linked In about bringing your best self to work. Loved this episode? Follow The Business of Being Brilliant, rate and review the show, and share it with friends and colleagues who care about building brighter, fairer workplaces.
