Our latest news – April 2021
Accessible Onboarding Guide
We were recently commissioned by one of our long-standing clients to produce an onboarding guide for a new post which was created as a result of a major service restructure. While this is something we are very familiar with and have produced many times for previous clients, the approach we needed to take with this particular project was completely different and totally new to us. We were advised by the client that the audience for the guide would have an average literacy level of around 8 years-old, with some unable to read or write at all. The onboarding guide had to be extremely accessible – both in its language as well as format. At first, we were quite unsure of how we would create an onboarding guide which was accessible and digestible for all, without over-simplifying or patronising.
We worked with our graphic designer to come up with a new concept consisting of clean visual elements which would go hand-in-hand with clear and concise language as well as audio description of every written component of the accessible onboarding guide. It was designed in such a way that it could be viewed on a device like a laptop, tablet or phone, or printed out to act as a physical handout. We worked very hard to avoid any complicated language – we discovered that striking the perfect balance of simple and effective language was actually quite difficult! So much so, we became a little obsessed with it. However, we feel that the work we dedicated to that really paid off.
The client ended up with a brand new concept which they had never used within the organisation before. They were pleased with the combination of clear language, sharp visuals and audio description which resulted in a highly effective and valuable resource for them to use, now and in the future.
Future Proof Ourselves – Webinar series
As you might know, we have been running fortnightly webinars since the beginning of lockdown. These have been very well received and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed running them. We particularly like that participants join in the discussion and offer their own thoughts and insights, which makes the sessions all the richer for everyone. Thank you to everyone who attended and participated – we really appreciate it.
We concluded the latest series of four sessions on 9th March. Throughout the series we covered Future Skills, Future Leaders, Future Workplaces and Future Teams. As you’ll see there was a theme and focus on the future. We had some insightful and interesting discussions around some expectations people have for the future and also presented some findings and statistic which showed us what we can prepare ourselves for.
By the end of the series, it was clear that we can expect there to be a considerable change to the way we work, expedited by COVID-19 and remote working for almost everyone, in some capacity. Leaders will need to adopt a more holistic approach to leading their teams, taking into consideration not just the working experience of the employee but more importantly, their life experience. Workplaces will not look massively different to how they do right now with many places adopting WFH more readily and embracing a more balanced working life between home-working and in the office. This will be accompanied by and will support more fluid and agile teams. We will also need to consider the way in which we re-skill and up-skill ourselves for the future as 50% of workers will need re-skilling by 2025 (World Economic Forum).
We have now launched a brand new series which kicked off this week with a fantastic session on Burnout. Lorna and David took us through a brilliant workshop on how to identify and manage it, both for ourselves and others. We came away with excellent ideas on how to avoid it, what signs to look out for and left feeling very calm and collected after practicing an amazing breathing technique to finish the session.
The following topics covered in this series will be Collaboration, Industry 4.0 and Clean Language, which is scheduled for 13th April at 10am. We hope to see you there!
Client News
As always, our clients are the most important part of our business and we love to be given new challenges and opportunities, which is happening more and more in these complex times! We prefer not to single people out but would like to share with you below a sample of the types of work we have been carrying out.
New clients are welcome anytime and we are always delighted to hear from existing clients about new challenges. The list includes:
NHS Assure – running a number of large-scale team development events ahead of a restructure and the creation of this new public health body
Ofgem – designing and running a large number of on-line workshops as part of a drive to roll out a new performance management & development process
NHS NSS – providing specialist advice on converting face to face workshops for online use
UK Policing – designing and running transformational change workshops with senior and specialist staff for digital transformation of policing services
Renfrewshire Council – in addition to the article by Sunna, we continue to work closely with the Council in implementing their new service model
Universities Scotland – designed and run 2 new workshops on workload management & strategic selling, including Clean Language
West Lothian College – designed and launched a new Leadership Development Programme for the new Executive Team at the College
Education Scotland – new style influence programme to reflect remote working for Head Teachers
NHS NSS – continuing weekly webinars on change, morale & resilience
East Renfrewshire Council – continuing the Leaders for the Future programme that we converted to a digital platform, working with the Roads Team to roll out Management Development & Executive Coaching as well as designing some webinars for the Economic Development Team & their new strategy
NHS National Services Division – designing a major facilitated event on public health planning post pandemic
NHS NSS Finance – planning a series of Rocket Remote workshops to support their transformation programme
Thanks again to all the clients who provide us with such great opportunities to work with them and their teams. We are delighted to be able to continue working with you and to support you in your endeavours as always.