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.

Sketchnotes from The CIPD Festival of Work June 2020

Rachel Burnham writes: Last week CIPD ran its first virtual Festival of Work with three days of online presentations, panel discussions and Q&A.  I participated in all three days and in some wonderfully inspiring and challenging sessions.

I wasn’t sure whether I would like a fully online conference, particularly over three days, but I really enjoyed it.  I actually much preferred it over last year’s ‘sitting in the dark, with headsets on experience’, which I found profoundly alienating and gave me a splitting headache.  This time it was great to have that ‘sitting in the front row’ feeling.  What I would love CIPD to add to the mix is the chance to chat in small groups with other people about the sessions – I am sure it would be possible to add this.

I Sketchnoted my way through all the sessions I participated in and shared the resulting Sketchnotes live on Twitter.  Here is the full collection for any you missed.

Opening Keynote from Prof Andrew Scott

Leading Good Work in Practice Panel 

Business Leadership in an Age of Disruption

D&I During Critical Times

From Course to Learning Experience Panel

Using Cognitive Neuroscience with David Rock 

Humans vs Automation? Dr Hannah Fry 

Agile Methodologies

The Power of Inclusion - Caroline Criado Perez

I hope you find them interesting and useful.

Rachel Burnham

17/6/2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.

5 Ways We Could Change How We Think About L&D

Rachel Burnham writes: At this time of year, I often curate a set of resources that I think are helpful for developing L&D and enabling L&D professionals to modernise our ways of working.  This year I have decided to do something different and instead take a step back to focus more generally on how we think about L&D.

  

Whilst some in the L&D profession are forging ahead trying out new ideas and experimenting with approaches based upon well-founded research and evidence of what works well, we also are part of a profession that is slow to change. Many continue to use methods and practices that we know are not as effective as they could be - methods and practices that are not meeting the challenges facing organisations or individuals.  

Here are five areas that I think we need to work on as a profession.

1.  Evidence-based

Whilst this approach has been adopted recently by CIPD, there is still a lot of muddle and confusion around about what this really means.   I think getting more in our profession familiar and confident using an evidence based approach can help with three challenges:

·       Tackling the pervasive influence of learning myths around subjects like learning styles, left brain/right brain and so on.

·       Encouraging a focus on effectiveness and what actually makes a difference to performance.

·       Building an appetite for making use of data analytics that is practical in focus.

2.  Looking at a wider range of jobs and sectors

So often the case studies, research and examples explored in L&D conferences, articles and podcasts are from the same rather narrow fields of employment.  It is time that we started to look more broadly beyond the knowledge worker or service sector and also consider the needs of other types of worker, sector and size of organisation.

 

When we are only hearing from this relatively narrow field, important though it is, we risk considering only these needs of these kinds of organisation and that the ideas and solutions presented only are effective in those situations.  If we want to tackle the long tail of L&D that is mostly still only using face to face delivery of content-heavy material, then we have to ensure that our examples, our research, our practices can meet these needs of a diverse range of job roles and organisations.     

3.  Less black and white, more nuance

I think we are running a risk of being too simplistic in some of our thinking about L&D practices.  Of making ‘blanket –judgements’ about ways of working.   ‘This is good’, ‘this is not’.  This is current, up-to-date, the latest thinking and this is not.

For example, I notice in each at the time of the Learning Technologies conference and exhibition a slew of articles about the latest technologies and a corresponding slew of articles defending face to face delivery.  

When it isn’t either or. 

We need to be so much better at being nuanced.  Not just about about the respective values of using technology and face to face, but across the whole field.  It is not helpful to run down the whole of education.  We know that context matters.   So let’s get much clearer about what works when, and in what circumstances, for who and at what point in their career and what the limitations are.   Let’s identify the boundary conditions for approaches, rather than portray each approach as the answer to everything. 

4.  Connect ideas

There are some amazing ideas being developed and explored in L&D.  New ways of working and new (well, newish, in some cases) models and practices.  Many have slightly different focuses and emphasis.   When you begin to be exposed to the range of approaches to performance consulting, models of learning, alternatives to face to face, learning at the point of need or in the flow of work and so on (and also their critiques) – I think a lot of people in our profession, who are new to these approaches can feel overwhelmed and over-faced.  ‘Where are earth do you start?’ 

It would be great to see some more linking up of these ideas, some more comparing and contrasting of them, so that they are not just used piecemeal, but more systematically. We need help to work our way through the thickets of new ideas and research, to weigh up what is of value and work out which ones  link together and are worth taking action on.     

5.  We neglect skills at our peril

I think there is some very interesting thinking around at present about knowledge – mostly about how we make much better use of resources or other performance support tools to reduce the need for knowledge learning.   There is great work on behaviour change around – work on habit formation and learning transfer to support this.   But I think we need to be also paying attention to how to effectively support ‘skills’ development. 

I think we have taken our eyes off this area a bit, yet it is hugely important.  High level skills can be challenging to develop and continue to be important in many areas of work.   Although we critique learning programmes for ‘mere content-dumping’ and a reliance on knowledge transfer done badly, we haven’t really focused much on how to develop complex skills effectively.  Skills that are needed in this wider range of jobs and organisations that I think we should be looking at.  

So, these are the 5 areas, which I think we could usefully focus on, to help shift thinking within our L&D profession, this year.  What do you think?

  

Rachel Burnham

13/1/2020

I help individuals and organisations to work and learn more effectively, particularly though using the tools of Sketchnoting and the curation of resources.  I make use of Sketchnoting to introduce people to using visuals to aid thinking, working and learning.  I help people to manage for themselves the information they need to stay up-to-date in their professional work.