Make Work Better Conference 2023
Make Work Better Conference 2023
#MWBConference23
IIP’s FIRST Make Work Better conference - and what a roaring success it was!
I’m unsure where to start with this one. When I signed up to blog about the day, I hadn’t really thought about how I would do it. What I’ve decided is that I’m going to give you a whistlestop tour of the conference, with my main takeaways. The things I know I’ll continue to mull over in the days and weeks to come. I hope it’s helpful.
Paul Devoy (CEO, Investors in People) opened the conference with what ‘Make Work Better’ means to him. He emphasised that jobs with development help give purpose, and that purpose changes lives. He mused that life is wasted if you’re not using your innate abilities (at work).
He concluded that making work better is not only the right thing but the smart thing to do for organisations: supporting and training managers, helping employees fulfill their potential, and giving them the development that they need. All of this means that people are more productive, and more engaged, with improved mental health and well-being and a better employee experience.
He said: Making work better is the rising tide that lifts all ships.
I got goosebumps.
Creating the workforce of the future
Facilitated by Paul Devoy
This first panel saw Ricky Leaves (British Airways), Sharon Blyfield OBE (Coca-Cola) and Kathryn Marshall (Lloyds Banking Group) take the stage to share their experiences of apprenticeships in their businesses.
The following benefits of an apprenticeship program were collectively cited:
Bringing young and emerging talent to the workforce without usual barriers
Rotational programmes mean people try different areas of the business before choosing a career path
Career changes (let’s not forget apprenticeships aren't just for early careers!)
The ability to help a business diversify.
But we all know measurement is key, especially when trying to get buy-in. Katheryn said at Lloyds Banking Group success is measured by improved engagement, increased retention, the continual building of skills and diversity of talent they’re seeing. Sharon said that she measures success by seeing where apprentices have off-boarded and writing case studies to show people’s stories to the board. In Ricky’s case, it’s about showing that British Airways is increasing diversity. BA is battling to rid itself of its 30-year-old ‘white / middle class / middle aged’ perception, but, with a 78% retention rate over the last five years for apprenticeships, it sounds like they’re managing to both diversify and improve employee experience at the same time.
The challenges the panel faces with their relative programs didn’t sound unfamiliar:
Young apprentices need more preparation when jumping from school to a job
Line managers need more support (and convincing)
Senior leaders need the same
One more point that is important to mention is that (and again, this isn’t something we’re unfamiliar with as ‘people’ people!) - induction / onboarding is KEY. Each business showed real care in their different approaches to onboarding apprentices, whatever their age.
When asked what she’d say to someone thinking about starting an apprenticeship programme, Kathryn said:
“They’re life-changing. They give confidence to both an individual and an organisation, but they also give that organisation a real advantage for the future.”
Life-changing. I came away from that discussion very, very excited about the future of apprenticeships.
Family-friendly workplace of the future
Facilitated by Beth Samson
What does work-life balance mean to you? Beth opened the discussion by asking this simple question.
Jane van Zyl, CEO at Working Families, who I’ve had the pleasure of hearing speak twice now, dislikes the phrase work-life balance because it’s too much pressure: Life goes in squiggles. It’s impossible to have a perfect balance of both.
Elliot Rae, Founder of MusicFootballFatherhood says: it’s about being able to dedicate time to both life and work as and when it’s needed.
Emily Christmas, HR Manager at Carrington West, likes to think of it as a work-life blend instead of balance.
Research shows that flexible working = higher engagement = more profit
What exactly is flexible working?
It’s a good time to reiterate that flexible working isn’t just working part-time. It’s working when and where you like, it’s making work work for you - it’s working in a way that suits your life and commitments. It’s actually much more than people imagine.
Key points made for me from this discussion were:
A big part of flexible working is having a culture of trust. Flexible working isn’t going to work if people are not trusted.
Companies need to think about what success looks like: what would your employees say about work? Their stories and experiences are so powerful. Jane said: It’s not about where I am, it’s about how engaged I am.
As a society, we cannot encourage women to have children and then not support them to live and work in 2023.
Suffolk County Council does flexible working really well. See here.
How can people get close to this elusive work-life balance if so many aren’t yet on board?
It’s clear that if senior leaders aren’t taking advantage of policies, others are less likely to (particularly men). So, here are a few nuggets this brilliant trio shared to take to your decision-makers:
Share data (financial benefit and improvement on bottom line)
Share stories (humanise everything / make it relevant to your business)
Encourage leaders to role-model working flexibly so others will
Listen to what leaders are talking about: what’s important to them? Then consider how you can link flexible working to those priorities.
Beth concluded by suggesting that perhaps it’s time for businesses to go back to basics: forget the policies and processes and strip back to principles. Reasons to say yes, not reasons to say no. Offering flexible working gives people options and allows them to realise their full potential. It also shows that a business is approaching work with ‘care’ in mind. We all want to work for a business like that.
Powering up for good: supercharging your team’s social and environmental engagement
Sanjay Lobo MBE
Sanjay Lobo, of Dragon’s Den fame, has harnessed the idea (and society’s increasing belief) that it’s not governments and charities that can fix the world’s problems, it’s businesses! In doing so he’s created an app called: OnHand, an app that makes doing social and eco good easy.
He’s done this based on research (from the wellbeing institute at Oxford University) that shows that volunteering fosters a sense of wellbeing and social connection. It’s also a great idea because 64% of millennials consider a company’s social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work.
I loved this app, it’s a great employee engagement tool that gives people lots of choice to volunteer in small chunks of time, locally and makes it easy to get involved. We’ll definitely be recommending it to clients going forward.
Unleashing the future of HR: A dialogue between Paul Devoy and Peter Cheese
Peter speaks with such conviction and knowledge, it was both brilliant and terrifying to listen to his thoughts on the future of HR.
What he said, in a nutshell:,
The expectations of a workforce have shifted for good. People want:
- improved well-being
- a voice
- to be valued
“You no longer have a job for life. You have a life of jobs.”
The future of flexible working?
We are well past the post-industrial era factory working model. This shift was turbo-charged by the pandemic, but it is continuing and it’s not going away. Flexible working is about giving people a great impression of a business, giving managers the support they need to give people flexible working, and it’s also about fairness - because it’s very hard with dispersed audiences
It all comes down to culture and trust, trusting people to do their work and people trusting businesses to have their best interests at heart.
What about AI and HR?
Peter said we should be curious about AI. We should lean in and experiment. We should use it and then apply your own overlay to make it work for each of us. And I wholly agree with this.
I particularly enjoyed Peter’s call to consider our collective responsibility to think about the jobs that will no doubt be impacted by AI - how do we upskill/reskill and support people to thrive in the future?
Peter asked: what are the principles of what a good and equal job looks like and, as we look to AI and how peoples jobs will be impacted, it’s important that we consider those people whose jobs will be lost, and how businesses will support ‘just’ transition for the people whose jobs are affected.
A strategic approach to the people experience; co-creating experiences that matter most to businesses (and people!)
Ben Whitter
Ben Whitter opened by reminding us that the one thing that we can all control is the power we have on day-to-day experiences (and how we react). And a lot of it has to do with kindness; kinder organisations, kinder teams, kinder people.
The world of work is changing and it’s challenging. It’s a big burden on employees to deal with the turbulence of life and all it throws at us, but Ben believes if you share the burden of the employee experience within a business it’s easier and it’s better.
Human-centred businesses are the most successful, they think about leadership, structure, technology, workplace and community - all with the human experience at the centre.
Ben says: with this holistic approach to shaping better and healthier experiences for people in work, we can see beyond the immediate limits of our functions.
But who should care about employee experience? Everyone should. Employee experience is co created, co-produced, co delivered, co-lead. Ben ended by saying the future is upon us. This is a new and exciting opportunity for HR to change their approach. To be people-centred and experience-driven. To be part of an organisation that serves its people. A lot to think about, right?
Do you always know best as a leader?
Fireside chat with Steven Bartlett and Paul Devoy
Facilitated by Anna Richardson
Many great stories and anecdotes came out of Steven’s talk with Paul and Anna, and it is true, Steven’s mind is something to behold (just how he houses all that brilliant data is incredible!). But what it confirmed for me was that the words of the day were: purpose, culture and trust. I had noted early on in the conference that those words seemed to weave through everyone’s discussions and by 16.00 I was set on it.
Snippets from Steven’s chat like ‘everyone is a leader’, ‘freedom within parameters’, ‘culture being set within a business’, ‘the single most important thing in a business is culture’, ‘culture already exists, you just have to find it’, ‘trust people to risk and experiment; the experiment fails, the person did not’, ‘culture drives behaviour’, ‘strengths-based organisations’ just kept coming up.
But I’d like to end with the five things that Steven quoted as making employees happy, according (probably a huge amount of) research:
Forward motion (a feeling of progression)
Challenge (not too much, not too little)
Control and autonomy
a goal that subjectively meaningful to them
working in a group in support of people that you love.
And that’s the perfect way to roundup this (not so short) summary of a brilliant day.
How do we make work better? It all sounds so simple in theory, especially after a day like yesterday. But the proof is in the practice. It makes me wonder what will come up at the Make Work Better conference in ten years time. How far will we have come? How much will we have progressed? One thing’s for sure, in a room full of HR professionals, it was heartening as an IC professional to see that we’re all on the same page - we really care about making work better.
