CIPD Scotland Annual Conference 2020: Driving Fair, Meaningful, and Productive Work

17 March 2020

As I leafed through the December issue of People Management magazine, I came across an advert from CIPD Scotland outlining their annual conference details. I got excited for a few moments. I thought I’d go, learn things, meet people, network’, until I saw the price...an eye-watering sum indeed, for a full-time student with limited budget. An email from the Student Development team of the University of Edinburgh Business School (which arrived the same day as the magazine) came to the rescue. In the email, there was an information about Santander funding of up to £300 for students who would like to attend an event of their interest. I applied. And I got accepted! So off I went, and I did learn things, meet people and network.

At the Conference

The 2020 Annual CIPD Scotland Conference took place in Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Peter Cheese, Chief Executive of CIPD, opened the conference with a talk on strategic HR and how ‘old-fashioned’ business leaders don’t see HR as strategic, claiming the function consists of ‘too much PowerPoint and too little Excel’. Cheese also pointed out that we should bring ‘human’ back to human resources practice.

After that an economist Vicky Price gave a Coronavirus-themed talk about the state of the economy. Even though the subject of Economics has never been at the top of my interests list, I found the talk very informative. What was particularly interesting was the point Price made about the Coronavirus influence on the pattern of working; due to the virus, increasing number of people are forced to work from home, companies might have to rethink their flexible working policies. Coronavirus forced the businesses to ‘test’ the work-from-home model and see it might not be as counterproductive as some anticipate. It’s a valid point, reinforced later by Tracey Lenthall during the B1 breakout session.

Breakout Sessions

The real disadvantage of the breakout sessions was that they run simultaneously, and I couldn’t be at two places at once. So, with a heavy heart, I picked two out of the six sessions that I thought I would benefit from the most.

The first session I attended, at 11:30, was meant to be a Productive Work Case Study: Data and Analytics, driving evidence-based decisions. Despite the fact that Angela Ignam from Aviva, who was to present the case study, didn’t make it to the conference, the session was saved by Ed Houghton, a researcher working for CIPD. During the session, Ed explained the difference between the ‘proper’ way of practicing evidence-based approach, and how HR professionals might mistakenly claim they use the approach, without realizing what it incorporates. Some of Peter Cheese’s remarks come to mind about ‘outsiders’ not seeing HR as strategic function (because it’s not based on statistics/evidence – the ‘Excel’ part. There is a very useful infographic on the CIPD website that reminds on the steps to follow with evidence-based practice.

Back to the Big Talks...

The panel discussion about ethics (with the panel members helpfully seated in the same order as the photos and short descriptions of them displayed on the screen) was a very thought-provoking experience. The insights from Shirley Rogers from NHS Scotland. She pointed out that leaders should do the best they can to get to know their team; that giving people the best possible understanding about what is expected from them, being kind and empathetic makes a massive difference to employees as well as managers/leaders.

Panel members included:

• Shirley Rogers, Chief People Officer and Director of Health Workforce, Leadership, Reform and EU Exit Preparations
• Greig Aitken, Group Head, People Strategy and Insight, RBS
• Katie Jacobs (Chair), Senior Stakeholder Lead, CIPD
• Peter Cheese, Chief Executive, CIPD
• Vickie Gooch, HRD, Sainsbury’s

All the talks were very interesting and engaging, but the last one (and the one I was looking forward to the most) absolutely exceeded my expectations. John Amaechi, an Organisational Psychologist, Director of the UK’s largest NHS Trust, and former NBA Basketball Player started his talk by asking us all vote for the cutest kitten of the four he showed us and then making us feel horrible about the kitten who came last due to our voting ("Pose-ey [that’s the kitten’s name] always comes last..." [sighs from the audience] "Don’t sigh! You did it to Pose-ey!"). That was followed by the psychological explanation of why we voted the way we did. All that to point out our biases, which we then transfer when creating AI solutions to help us overcome the biases.

Another interesting observation John made was that with all the problems with trust, transparency, communication within organisations we shouldn’t increase our dependency on technology, but rather try to reduce it. How can we fix those issues remotely while holding things like virtual meetings, when we were not so far successful in fixing them interacting face-to-face, he asked.

Some Final Thoughts

Apart from having the opportunity to listen to all the interesting talks from guest speakers, I also met HR professionals who attended, I shared my experiences as an HR student as well as asked about their work and how they ended up working in HR. It makes me feel positive that there are so many HR professionals who want to broaden their knowledge, keep up to date with new developments within the profession, and share their experiences with others by attending conferences (and other events organised by CIPD).

I also learned more about the benefits of my CIPD membership from the CIPD representatives who attended the conference. For instance, I found out there are free CIPD courses available for all the members on the CIPD website. By completing them we can keep our knowledge on HR practices up to date. That’s the plan for after my dissertation submission deadline.

During the second breakout session I chose – Fairer Work Case study: Flexible Working – Finding a balance to enhance productivity – Tracey Lenthall from PwC was talking us through the company’s process of introducing flexible working. Tracey was mainly speaking of remote working adapted by PwC, and that it works very well for everyone. There were a lot of questions from the audience about the possibly lost social aspect of working, and the isolation remote working might cause. I found the questions really interesting and I will find out more about this area. Tracey outlined the advantages of this approach. John Amaechi’s talk and his thoughts about remote working completed the very complex picture.

Lidia Lewandowska, MSc Human Resource Management