Family friendly gems from the CIPD Annual Conference

We've captured few gems relevant to engaging the parents and carers in your workforce

The CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition in Manchester (8-10 November) provided inspiration and applied solutions for HR leaders, with a focus on the need for HR to help drive business performance by getting the best out of people.

'How' you communicate is just as important as 'what' you communicate

Tim Taylor, Head of Reward at TUI Travel and Stephen Gambles, Senior Reward Manager, Santander delivered practical lessons under the title Inspiring your People through the Successful Communication of Benefits.

It matters as much how we tell our people the what and why of benefits as it does having them in place.

TUI Travel pays attention to the internal branding of benefits, linking them under the themes of 'be special' and 'be rewarded', using all available opportunities to communicate these and carefully segmenting the population while always keeping the big picture in sight.

Stephen Gambles at Santander points outs that "more senior people have more benefits but less time to digest the information about them" calling for targeted communications by role seniority as well as other factors such as generation: The 44% of the Santander population under the age of 30 will read e-shots and texts very readily; the 11% over 50 may well prefer hard copy documents and face-to-face discussions.

Coaching is on the up but going internal

On the other hand, something that is increasingly embedded is coaching. The CIPD Annual Learning and Talent Development Survey reports that coaching now takes place in more than four-fifths of organisations (86%, compared with 82% last year).

In 43% of organisations, line managers have the main responsibility for delivering coaching and in a striking 34% of organisations, internal coaches have the main responsibility for coaching.

This ties clearly with My Family Care's experience that some of the most important work we do with our client organisation is in supporting the development of internal coaching capability in relation to our specialist areas.

Engaging valuable talent

Deborah Baker, Group Director for People at Sky is clear about both the 'hardware' and 'software' needed to engage talent. The hardware must be in place to: carry out effective appraisals; manage learning; develop leaders; gather employee feedback; and manage careers, including moving talent around as part of succession planning.

This foundation of hardware must be overlaid with the kind of 'software' we pick up from Sky's "sizzle" video showing how "Believe in Better" applies internally to their own people. Deborah Baker sees these key 'software' elements as: providing motivation and challenge; offering exciting opportunities; actively letting people have fun; and remembering that if you go the extra mile for your people, they will go the extra mile for you.

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