I spent yesterday at day 1 of the CIPD Northern Area Partnership conference (#cipdnap16) and before I head back into the breach today, thought I'd capture some reflections - mainly because my brain is quite flighty and I don't want today's content to push yesterday's out!
It's my first of these conferences and I was drawn in by the theme - Even more amazing workplaces - because, well, who doesn't want one of those? It's also very relevant to what's going on in my work world, as we seek to create a culture where people are empowered to work wherever suits them best, and managers have the skills to support them, and be confident that we will achieve the outcomes we need. So I approached each session studiously, pen and paper at the ready, and found loads of interest...my main highlights and reflections being:
@profcarycooper on Wellbeing - I haven't had the pleasure of hearing Sir Cary speak before and he was brilliant. I am a data geek, and he used a massive depth and breadth of research to outline why mental health and wellbeing have a such a big impact on productivity and the economy. I'd heard the message but not the research which gives it credibility before. In relation to a long hours / presenteeism culture, we discussed various IT policies to stop people accessing emails out of hours - but I can't help but feel that this is a sticking plaster, which wouldn't in itself change the culture. It surely comes back to managers knowing when and how their team are working, and being close enough to see and discourage a consistent habit of checking emails when they are meant to be resting and enjoying home life. For me the big takeaway was the focus on hr's role in creating a strategy which reduces stress and equips managers to reduce stress in the environment, rather than reactively focusing on helping employees to deal with it, or picking up the pieces when it goes wrong (though both of these are important!). The question which stayed with me was how we select line managers - how do we assess whether they have or could learn the interpersonal skills to manage humans! Slightly soberingly he estimated that around 10-15% of people managers shouldn't be in charge of people and are unlikely to be able to take on the skills they need!
My first workshop was @timpointer on culture, a really fun interactive session. I loved his image of culture being like a backpack which gets fuller and fuller - sometimes we need to consciously take things out before we can put other things in. A few thoughts which stayed with me from that session - we tend to focus on employees when we think about culture; what about all the people who aren't technically employed but are working in and closely with us? They'll impact culture too. We challenged policies which hold us back - dress codes being a popular one, I was delighted to say we don't have one! - this made me think about whether as we look at big culture change, we may need to do more to policy than just change the ones which directly impact on process changes. Some ideas around welcoming new people - I love the idea of new starters receiving a welcome card from their new team on their first day, and seeing induction as a ritual of welcome - one way of bringing it to life and using someone's first weeks as an opportunity to inspire and engage, rather than a painful period to endure of not quite knowing enough!
I wrote loads down whilst listening to the story of how James Cropper changed their culture to have more of a performance focus. Three striking things. The distinction between who wants change and who wants TO change - how to help people see they are part of the solution. Pace of change - leadership are usually way ahead of the rest of the organisation when it comes to change readiness, but if you go too fast and don't work really hard on bringing the organisation with you, people will get left behind. I think of it as leadership being in a speed boat which can turn on a sixpence, and sometimes forgetting that the organisation is a cruise ship which takes quite a lot longer to turn.
And finally the Ignite sessions - I didn't note much down during these as I was enjoying listening to them too much. But I seem to have ended up with one thought from each speaker. From @timscotthr, let's throw away everything that's stopping us treating people like human beings. Just - yes. There's a day to go but this is a top contender for quote of the conference! From @trustcallhr - it's ok for different parts of an organisation to have different cultures as long as they're built on similar principles (then highlighting the need to be intentional about working out what principles and values are fundamental to us). And @gary_cookson - ten minutes in rhyme, brilliant, with the perfectly expressed reminder that fun doesn't have to be about Google and hammocks and sh*t.
I deliberated for too long this morning about whether it was ok to wear jeans to an event with a business smart dress code, but given how many times we rubbished dress codes yesterday I decided it was ok!
