8 Sketchnotes from the CIPD Festival of Work 12 & 13 June 2024

Rachel writes: I was at the CIPD's hashta#FestivalOfWork last week at Excel in London. And what a wonderful event it was - lots of people, lots of conversations - a vibrant and lively atmosphere. This event is now a free event and all the better for it. The new venue worked a treat for the larger number of participants- the exhibition and sessions were busy, but I never felt crowded. A great range of topics were on the agenda in the multiple stages - business transformation, learning & development, wellbeing, equalities, internal communications, ethics and so on. My only quibble is that most of the sessions were only 30 minutes in length - I would love to see some longer sessions, in addition to the keynotes, where topics are explored in greater depth.

I Sketchnoted 8 sessions over the course of the two days - here they are:

AI and Ethics

The first session I took part in was on the subject of 'The Ethical Implications of AI and Automation and was presented by James Proctor and Louise Johnston of Phase 3 - a Manchester based company. This was one of a number of sessions exploring different aspects of the use of AI in organisations and the changes that we are facing in our working lives.

This session brought out both some of the benefits, but also some key ethical issues to consider in using AI such as risks of bias, issues of transparency and trust, data privacy and concerns about job losses. James and Louise emphasised the value of people and AI working together - the copilot model. I particularly liked the phrase 'human in the loop' which is about designing in that it is always a person that makes the decisions, when using AI applications.

Fireside chat with Stacey Dooley 

One of the keynote session's was an informal chat with documentary maker Stacey Dooley who talked about allyship, gender equality, building relationships and mental health.

AI for L&D

Nelson Sivalingam was speaking about how AI can be used by L&D professionals. A quick survey of participants revealed that we felt AI was already having a big impact in our personal lives, but only a few of those L&D present felt it was having an impact so far on our organisational worklife. Nelson challenged us to raise our game with how we envisaged using AI in our L&D work, from the nearest small hill to a higher peak (not yet even in view) and to move our thinking beyond content creation and automation to a more strategic series of applications to focus on skills.

Have organisations already achieved equality in the workplace?

This was the challenging title of a challenging session led by Lutfur R. Ali.

Lutfur began by considering the future of Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion in the context of the backlash against EDI, what some of the reasons for this vocal backlash are and what the reality of EDI is in organisations. He encouraged us to work on 'developing a shared understanding' but also to simplify the language we use to ensure that it is understandable and accessible for managers throughout our organisations and doesn't act as a barrier to action for them. He challenged us to focus on 'Equality of outcome and impact' and recognise that organisational culture - particularly aspects such as wellbeing & psychological trust are vital and equality is not just about 'representational diversity'.

The Skills Agenda

This hashtag#Sketchnote picks out key points from the panel session 'Navigating the Future: The Skills Agenda and Why does it Matter?', which was chaired by @CIPD's Lizzie Crowley. The panel included: Claire Tunley, from the Financial Services Skills Commission; Liz Williams MBE from FutureDotNow; Tom Ravenscroft, Skills Builder Partnership; and Sonia Pawson, from West Yorkshire Fire Service.

I was particularly struck by the statistic shared by Liz Williams MBE that only 4 in 10 people are planning to upskill their digital skills this year. This seems astounding and shocking in equal measure, giving how fast things are developing in the field of technology. She cautioned us in developing our organisation's digital skills to focus more on where we are now and guided us to the framework for 20 key digital skills which can be accessed on the FutureDotNow website. This was a key takeaway from the event for me.

Green Skills and your workforce

This panel session explored the concept of jobs and skills to support sustainability and included consideration of a wider range of skills linked to the whole ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda. My favourite advice from the session was about 'layering in new skills' rather than using the language of reskilling - and it gave me the perfect opportunity to draw a piece of layer cake!

Keynote with Dex Hunter-Torricke from Google Deep Mind

The afternoon keynote on the 2nd day of the CIPD Festival of Work last week, was from Dex Hunter-Torricke from Google Deep Mind. This session was a wide ranging walk through some of the challenges we are likely to be facing from the disruption caused by the adoption of AI in 'the intelligence revolution. He shared with us some of the scenarios about how AI could be used in very diverse fields and way the ripples from these changes may impact us socially. He talked about the need to be both BOLD and also RESPONSIBLE and the need for Renaissance leaders. We were challenged to disrupt ourselves and think simultaneously in terms of 6 months ahead and 10 years ahead.

Behaviour and Learning Change

In this session, Amy Brann, shared insights on the brain, learning and behaviour change. She discussed how our brains continue to develop and asked us 'What have you been myelinating recently?' A key point from this session for me, was to focus on reinforcing required new behaviours, when attempting to change behaviours.

Rachel Burnham

17 June 2024

I help individuals and organisations to use visuals to think, learn and work more effectively, particularly though using Sketchnoting and drawing.

Is Sketchnoting only relevant to people in creative roles?

Rachel writes : This blog is the first in a short series looking at some of the questions and feedback I have received recently.

I want to start with this question about the relevance of Sketchnoting to different roles. Sketchnotes make use of a combination of words and simple pictures and I confess that when I first started offering workshops introducing people to Sketchnoting, I thought that the people who would find Sketchnoting most useful would be people in roles that were clearly creative such as learning designers, writers and communicators. But over the last 6 years I have worked with a very wide range of professionals including forensic scientists, healthcare professionals, coaches, software designers, engineers, chemical regulations experts, librarians, educators, academic publishers, quality improvement teams, people professionals and yes, even some learning designers!

What continues to fascinate me is the wide range of ways in which these professionals are using Sketchnoting to help them to be even more effective in their work.  Lots of people are initially attracted to Sketchnoting as a way of making meaningful notes when attending meetings and conferences, but then find they can apply Sketchnoting to their work in many other ways. Through working with diverse groups and seeing the uses that they put Sketchnoting to, I have realised that Sketchnoting can be used not only for making notes, but for planning work, to aid reflection, for sense-making, as a flexible communication tool and many other uses.   For example, some coaches use Sketchnoting to create shared notes with coachees; managers have used Sketchnotes to map out processes with their teams and research students have used Sketchnotes to synthesize ideas from multiple data sources. Sketchnoting can be an aid to creativity as it enables you to make fresh connections and see things differently because of its use of visuals, layout and metaphors.

There is a huge amount of change in the world of work, with many roles facing constant change and requirements for new skills and behaviours.  Over the years many attempts have been made to suggest what skills will be needed in the future. One of the requirements consistently predicted for many roles is increased demand for creativity. So perhaps all of us could gain from having a go at Sketchnoting.

Let me know what you think.