How you can evolve your workplace culture

The Home Office ‘Enough’ campaign (Enough.campaign.gov.uk), aimed at bystanders for spotting abuse of girls and women and knowing how to stop it, was based on an unprecedented 180,000 responses to a year-long call for evidence. The campaign messages are clear and effective: say something, tell someone, offer support, provide a diversion. 

These messages are based on the 4Ds of Direct, Distract, Delegate, Delay, which are at the heart of Emailogic’s highly successful Active Bystander course. We explore how all delegates can become advocates for healthy culture change, through challenging inequalities and injustices in the workplace.

We take the time to understand your organisational context, to design scenarios in the session which will resonate with your people. Delegates are immersed in analysing what the spectrum of inappropriate behaviour looks like, from micro-aggressions to discrimination, harassment, and bullying. Using group discussion, sociological models, multi-media and crafted experiential activities, delegates are armed with the tools and techniques to intervene appropriately and to help evolve your culture. 

We have examples of where the 4D’s have been used effectively, for events which have happened after the training, and even action which has been taken regarding concerns which happened before the training. One delegate, months after a session, got in touch to say they had acted on a concern which had kept them awake at night for a year, as the core message of ‘it’s never too late to act’ had resonated.  

To reinforce this training on the ground, all delegates are given take-away materials including a handy reminder of the 4Ds. Delegate satisfaction levels are exceptionally high, and often lead to further related training being commissioned such as ‘Handling Challenging Conversations’.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Emailogic Insights, our quarterly newsletter which will give you regular updates about what we’ve been up to. We will also aim to highlight workplace trends and insights we are seeing across our work in all sectors which may help inform your L&D planning.

In this edition of Insights, you can read about our take on the skills required in this new age of Artificial Intelligence.  We also look at the challenges and potential solutions to hybrid working, and tell you about our new ‘Training Talk’ format which went down a storm at a recent session on Digital Communication in Business. Finally, you can also read about our very popular Active Bystander course.

We hope you enjoy this issue. If you would like to know more about how we can support your learning and development needs, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  

Meta Skills for the AI Age

A major topic of debate currently among the team here at Emailogic has been the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the future world of work, and what it will mean in terms of jobs lost but also roles created.   

As a consultancy interested in helping our customers’ drive behavioural change and organisational development, our specific interest is in what skills will be required in this new AI age.

In his prescient 2012 book, ‘Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age’, Marty Neumeier explains how automation drives the progression from creative and skilled work to robotic work, capable of being done by machines. He extolls the increasing need for employees therefore to develop skills which drive their ability to communicate, work in teams, be resilient and think for themselves. Neumeier groups these skills into five talents: Feeling, Seeing, Dreaming, Making, & Learning.    

We believe we have a wealth of existing courses which help to develop these skills, such as our popular ‘Understanding Emotional Intelligence’ and ‘Effective Communication using Stories’ sessions.

In addition, to meet the need for the Meta Skills identified by Neumeier and also driven in part by Customer requests, we are currently developing a 90 minute ‘Meta Skills for the AI Age’ course. Like all Emailogic sessions, this will be powerful, interactive, engaging and thought provoking…and delivered by our expert human facilitators! 

Struggles with Hybrid working are real!

While the direction for hybrid work in the UK is undoubtedly forward-facing, employees perceive management failures in improving hybrid work.

Many businesses have said they are struggling to create meaningful connections among employees within the company itself. Almost 40% have reported fewer conversations taking place emphasizing the challenge businesses face in creating opportunities for insights and knowledge sharing across teams and skill sharing that used to take place within office conversations.

To succeed in growing and bringing your teams together you need to encourage communication in a hybrid working environment through tools such as Video conferencing and chat platforms - Teams is a good tool which provides both these functions also a great communication tool is email if used correctly. It is also a good idea to foster a collaborative culture by creating opportunities for employees to connect and work together whether that be in person or remotely.

It is important to make sure that your employees have the right technology and equipment to carry out their work. Managers need to be able to measure productivity so you can ensure that your hybrid working model is delivering the desired results. This might involve setting goals, tracking progress, and using analytics tools to measure performance.

It has become apparent that since the pandemic employees are now seeking a more flexible way of working for their home/work life balance. It has been shown that hybrid working does not just work for the employees; a truly hybrid model can offer flexibility and empower employees to work to their strengths, which in turn boosts productivity.

Contact us to discuss your training plans:

Informal and Inspiring Discussions with your Team

Recently one of our customers asked for us to provide a subject matter expert to host a discussion with a senior team about a specific topic – Digital Communication in Business. The discussion was 90 minutes and took place just before the lunchtime slot on a team building day.

The conversation went past in a flash, with everyone fully involved and sharing in a deeper way than might happen in a more formal training environment. It was designed to inform and for the team to learn and bond together in a more relaxed peer group environment.

It worked brilliantly with the feedback being unanimously excellent. Delegates felt they got to be really heard and understood – and the topic veered in and out of digital communication and naturally focused on related, topics people really wanted to explore.

We are now offering ‘Training Talks’ for any topic (or related topic) in the Emailogic training catalogue. If you are interested in having one of our highly-experienced experts host an in-depth discussion at one of your team away days, contact Marc Powell (07950 340172 or marc.powell@emailogic.com) or Steve Morley (07903 541124 or steve.morley@emailogic.com). We will work with you to refine an inspiring and exciting discussion for your team.

Why not book a place on our upcoming discussion forums - see topics below

There will be discussions on various topics where you can learn from others and network with HR and L&D peers