Thank you to everyone who joined our first Face to Face Network event of the year (and for quite some time!). It was so exciting to see everyone in person again - there’s nothing like the buzz of a good breakout session!
We kicked off with a Member Contribution from Bupa on their Employee Engagement Journey, presented by Angela Smith and Andrew Webb. The focus here was how Bupa are engaging their workforce through technology regardless of role, sector, and access to company applications. The implementation of a new platform that will be accessible to all employees whether they have a company email or not generated a lot of questions, and also gave us some food for thought for our first breakout session.
After a quick tour of the BUPA site and a talk about how they are using their space in a different way to encourage people back to the office, we moved on to our interactive sessions – Engaging a Hybrid Workforce and Attracting and Retaining Talent.
These are topics that we keep returning to in our sessions and based on feedback in the room remain high on the priority list for all our members. A huge thank you to Kier for sharing the innovative ways they have developed their Employee Value Proposition. It’s easy to assume that salary should be the focus, but we all agreed that in a competitive market it needs to be the whole package and we need to be able to articulate that package to potential and existing employees.
A networking lunch in BUPA’s fabulous Hive restaurant and breakout space gave us all the opportunity to share stories and get to know each other a bit better, before moving on to our slot on Financial Wellbeing. It was so interesting to hear that while the cost of living and financial wellbeing is important for all of us given macro events, that our members did not feel that the topic was high on the agenda in terms of strategic initiatives.
We discussed differing opinions on pay-on-demand, support for employees in terms of EAPs and how we still feel there is a stigma surrounding discussing financial difficulties at work.
This event really reinforced for us that nothing beats workshopping problems face to face and gave us some great ideas for future discussions and conference.
We look forward to seeing you at our next event which will be online on October 4th.
