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Shaping Our Future – Learning at Work Week 2015

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Shaping Our Future – Learning at Work Week 2015

‘Learning at Work Week runs from 18th-24th May..’

It’s a brilliant annual awareness event organised by the Campaign for Learning and has been running since 1999.

The week offers an opportunity to promote and deliver learning activities in a way that is fresh, exciting and engaging. It’s all about giving learning the profile it deserves.

The idea is to enable organisations to run a branded learning campaign in the workplace that’s linked to a national event. Each year, thousands of organisations from SMEs to large corporations and public sector organisations take part, running vibrant campaigns and activities which engage employees and promote positive messages about learning.

Shaping Our Future

The theme for Learning at Work Week 2015 is ‘Shaping our Future’. It focuses on the vital role of learning and development in building resilient, forward-thinking and creative workplaces. The theme highlights:

  • Dealing with change and building resilience
  • Developing the future workforce
  • Building creative environments

The Campaign for Learning provides a ton of ideas for planning events and activities that fit your organisation’s goals and objectives and are linked to the needs of your employees. You can find top thoughts and ideas about the theme for this year and how to support employees on the organiser’s website. It’s also worth registering online to take advantage of the other resources available.

Learning and creativity

Emphasis is put on creativity in the workplace and employees are encouraged to focus on self-motivation and learning – coming up with original ideas is something most of us can do when we put our minds to it! We recently ran a survey at Alive, delving into the levels of creativity in the world of internal communications. A skills shortage was cited as one of the biggest hurdles to comms pros taking a more creative approach in the workplace. Embracing Learning at Work Week and an ongoing commitment to personal and professional development could be just the ticket!

Many companies use the week as a catalyst for change, providing an opportunity to ‘rebrand’ or refresh learning and development, celebrating the learning that takes place all year round.

The benefits of joining in with the campaign are bountiful! Along with enhancing employee engagement, increasing knowledge, recognising internal talent, supporting wellbeing and promoting L&D opportunities it’s also a great way to encourage creativity.

Visual Inspiration

These Pinterest boards offer more useful resources, activity ideas and tools to help you deliver a successful Learning at Work Week.

Activity ideas www.pinterest.com/lawdaywire/learning-at-work-week-activity-ideas
Organisers’ tools www.pinterest.com/lawdaywire/law-week-organisers-toolbox 

If you’re short on time, here are some quick wins and activity ideas suggested by the Campaign for Learning:

Shout about it!
Send a ‘save the date’ message to get your promotion rolling. Use the graphics on the Learning at Work Week website for your intranet, emails and other communications. Ask champions to spread the message and invite the CEO and senior managers to make a public announcement. Download the posters from the Learning at Work Week website to promote your activities, focusing on the benefits of taking part.

Promote your internal talent
Invite colleagues from different levels of the business to run a short taster session (30 – 40 minutes) on something they can teach – both work and just-for-interest topics. It’s a great way to get a mix of activities for the week and present a different side to colleagues. Languages, photography, hand massage and Excel formulas may be just some of the topics on offer in your organisation.

Show a TED Talk and have a discussion
Tap into the vast range of online lectures, talks and panels sessions and screen a film followed by a debate. Ted Talks are well known and popular, but there are lots of other organisations which film their event – try Intelligence Squaredthe RSA and the Royal Society. It’s a stimulating and social way to introduce colleagues to new thinking on all sorts of topics, from brain science to becoming more creative.

Get the view from the top
Ask senior managers and leaders to give a talk about their own experiences, including how learning helped them get to where they are, their attitudes towards learning and how they learn. This is a powerful and often popular way to draw attention to the power of continual learning.

Run an innovation workshop
Get people from across your organisation together to talk about common workplace challenges and issues. Agree on one and focus on how it might benefit from a new approach. Try NESTA’s DIY Toolkit for practical tools you can use to generate new ideas.

Make learning visible
Create wall art or a graffiti board by inviting colleagues to draw or write their response to activities they’ve done, or things that would make them happy to learn.

Get the inside story
Capture learning in action with cameras and videos, so you can celebrate and share after the event. Gather feedback from participants to measure success, and find out what they would like to do more of. Build this into your learning offer all year round.

Measuring up

On the subject of measurement, if you’re looking to show changes in behaviour or attitudes as a result of your Learning at Work Week activities, record a ‘baseline’ so you can compare it to what happens after.

Take activity measurements beforehand – use of your intranet, changes in productivity, requests for learning support, downloads of resources, sign-ups for courses, enquiries about new roles and opportunities and customer satisfaction ratings.

Join the conversation

Spread the word about Learning at Work Week, share the brilliant resources provided by the Campaign for Learning, enjoy the activities you host and get planning for 2016!

You can follow the build up and activities throughout the week by joining the conversation on Twitter @LAWWeekWire and following the hashtag #NLAWWeek.

“I feel like they own and care for the project as much as we do! I would not use anyone else for my creative work and think Alive is ahead of the game.”

Jo Hobbs — Communications Manager

“Thanks for all your help. We are delighted with the campaign, both in terms of the creativity and messaging but also the thought taken over the rollout of the materials. All looks absolutely fabulous!”

Sarah Crowdy — Campaign and Media Officer Communications, South East Water

“We went to ‘Alive’ for ideas on how to run a specific employee program in Europe. Alan and his team were brilliant in coming up with fresh, creative and practical approaches. The team took charge and executed brilliantly. We are pleased with the progress made so far and hope to have the same level of partnership and commitment going forward.”

Sobha Varghese — Tata Consultancy Services

“Alive helped us create a video of our response to the floods of winter 2019. Our Chief Officer received messages from all round the country praising us for it and was really pleased with both the video and the response to it.”

Alexander Mills, Communications Manager — South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue

“We had the privilege to work with the Alive team. It was our first time to be involved in creating an animation for our patients within paediatrics. The team were approachable, friendly, creative and very accommodating. Your vision for what you want to create, is at all times acknowledged, appreciated and accommodated by the team. They worked effectively and with great passion towards our project and worked not only alongside health professionals but also our patients who really enjoyed the experience of working with the Alive team. It has given our team the confidence and inspiration to do further projects in the future. We highly recommend Alive and their exceptional team.”

DR ELENI ATHANASAKOS, Lead Paediatric Clinical Scientist — NHS Barts Health

“‘The short animation developed in co-production with clinicians and young people is outstanding! Informative, developmentally appropriate, vitally fun and engaging. We are really grateful for the expertise of the Alive with Ideas team for their innovative approach in building children’s health literacy.'”

Kath Evans — Director of Children’s Nursing at Barts Health

“Our mission was to update our brand visuals to better reflect our innovative and forward-thinking organisation. After receiving numerous pitches from different branding agencies, Alive stood out with their clear passion and understanding of our identity and goals. We thoroughly enjoyed working with the Alive Team to create an engaging new brand that we are immensely proud of.”

Lianne Springer — Communications and Engagement Lead

“Alive wowed us during the pitch process and they didn’t stop wowing us throughout the whole project. Every person we worked with at Alive were so friendly, knowledgeable and clearly passionate about what they do. They have worked with us to really understand what we do and have created a new brand and website that really stands out from our competitors. Thank you!”

Louise Burnard, Head of Marketing and Communications UK — Be | Shaping the Future

“I think the team have done such a brilliant job, particularly with responding to our requests. It's one of the best mental health videos I've ever seen. Very proud to be associated with your exemplary work. Thank you so much.”

Dr Anna Batho — Clinical Psychologist – Critical Care, UCLH

“We have worked with Alan, Caroline and the wider Alive With Ideas team for many years. In that time, they have provided a dedicated service that is second to none. We appreciate their attention to detail and creative approach to bringing our brand, communications and stories to life. And would recommend them to anyone looking for creative communications support.”

Georgia Beech — Internal Communications Specialist, Ocado Group

“This is brilliant. I wanted to give my heartfelt thanks to all of the team who worked on this. You all understood exactly what we wanted to communicate and why, and then managed to do it in a way that was far better than anything I could have imagined. I’m a bit choked up to be honest!”

Sarah Wright, Head of Communications and Campaigns — NEA

“Each time I work with the team, I am always stunned at the effort and creativity that goes into each detail and am always eager for the end result. The team is extremely accommodating and always provide a fresh approach to our projects that elevates our communications materials!”

Alana Khaytin, Communications Specialist — Braskem America

“What I really appreciate about Alive is that they work with us as partners, and care as much about getting it right for our patients as we do.”

Sara Langston, Patient Engagement & Marketing Manager — italk

“Alive are unique in how much they deeply listen and invest in you and your ideas. I have not come across a company that listens as much as they do to ensure your needs are understood and met (actually - they always exceed my needs and expectations). Everyone I recommend Alive to has an equally brilliant experience. When you work with Alive, you are not only getting some genius creativity brought into your life, you are also hanging out with some of the best examples of human beings I’ve ever known.”

Steph Tranter, Hybrid Exec Coach & Psychologist — StephTranter.com

“The (Alive) team were able to creatively pull together and document (in just over 2minutes) everything our service has achieved over the last few months, from thousands of prescriptions deliveries to hundreds of phone calls made to the vulnerable. The final product was so powerful and reflective of what our service has and continues to achieve. It couldn’t have been better received within the service – thanks Alive for once again helping us to communicate our vision!’”

Emma Wright — South Yorkshire & Rescue

“We worked with the team at Alive to create our staff recognition video.
At a time like this, its never been more important to share the amazing work that our staff have done and continue to do on a daily basis under very difficult circumstances. We wanted to shout about this and recognise that when the time came, South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue stepped up to the plate. We didn’t want an ordinary thank you post on social media or a basic email sent out internally, we wanted something special. Enter Alive. ”

Emma Wright — South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue

“Our company is fun, we have great brands, but most importantly we’re all about our people – and I wanted an agency who would understand that and help us bring it to life through our website and other comms. Straight away I felt that Alive ‘got’ us and provided the creative inspiration exactly where we needed it, as well as the technical expertise to deliver a well-functioning website.”

Keren McCarron, Head of Corporate Affairs & Communications — KP Snacks

“Boom!
Thank you so much. Incredible work done at incredible speed by incredible people.
Outstanding work as ever and what a turnaround. As for the concepts – wow. These are that good it would be an insult to describe them as just good. It’s a joke, quite frankly. This is exactly the Alive effect I was after. Right now I feel like I am living in an Alive With Ideas wonderland. Thank you!”

Jack Grasby, Campaigns Manager — SYFR

“If you are looking to improve creativity and build teamwork, I highly recommend a session like this for your team. No matter where you are in your creativity journey, a workshop like this can give your team a boost of energy and ideas to invigorate their creative thinking.”

Amy Lilja, IC Manager — Hennepin Healthcare

“Alive were there to help when we were working every hour to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. They gave us the creativity, ideas and support we needed to deliver campaigns which empowered our residents in the most difficult time most of us have ever seen, personally and professionally. The team understood what we needed, worked closely with us and delivered fast without any compromise on quality. Working with Alive has been a joy in the darkest of times and I have no doubt will have helped to save lives. Thanks team x”

Julie Odams, Assistant Director of Communications & Customers — Derbyshire County Council

“We got 'Alive' involved to help us shift mindsets across our organisation and they delivered! Using simple, clear and creative ideas the team have delivered us a campaign which has seen a dramatic increase in idea sharing and development. They’ve also played a significant role in creating a culture of shared success. I wouldn’t hesitate to work with again, in fact, we already are!”

Gavin Buckle — B&Q
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