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"We spend more time than ever communicating, yet
I feel less informed"
We live in a world full of devices that enable us to communicate
more quickly and to a wider audience, yet as the quote above
suggests, our employees often struggle to understand and grasp
a key vision.
The annual Staff Conference provides a unique opportunity
to share key messages with the entire workforce, whilst also
affording the chance to raise motivation and for staff to
get to know one another better.
Our recent work with housing associations has been described
as fun, motivating and inspirational. The programmes are based
on experiences that bring groups together and identify ways
to move the organisation forward, in preference to back-to-back
PowerPoint presentations. Instead we get teams developing
film storyboards to promote their organisation, building "talent
totem poles" to identify key talents and skills among
their colleagues or discovering how teams can outperform individuals
through group juggling.
Fresh Events has become the provider of choice to a number
of housing associations and we are continuing to develop new
and fresh ways of working with these groups. Here are some
of the highlights from our work with this sector:
Following recent changes within the organisation
including office moves and the appointment of a new Executive
Director, South Wight Housing Association held a staff
development day. Fresh Events put together a varied programme
that included "getting to know you" exercises and
discussion sessions as well as our hugely popular Chocolate
Challenge in which teams create boxes of chocolates from raw
ingredients. "The Chocolate Challenge
was a huge success with the staff; it incorporated all our
aims for the event, which were to improve communication and
team building, help staff get to know each other better and
ultimately for staff to enjoy themselves and have fun together"
(Margaret Wright, Executive Director, South Wight Housing
Association).
As part of London and Quadrant's annual staff conference
we ran workshops on the theme of trust. The conference theme
was "Facing the Future" and around 800 staff attended.
The workshop explored the effect that trust has on personal
and organisational performance through the use of the team
game Saboteur and the compelling example of the highly successful
and trusting restaurant that doesn't give its customers bills,
it simply asks that diners pay what they feel their meal was
worth.
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Heart
of England Housing Group also asked Fresh Events to prepare
a programme for their staff conference and, having explored
various options with the senior management team, we created
an itinerary that included table hosts made up of the organisation's
'rising stars' to lead teams in a number of creative and mental
challenges. A training day for these table hosts before the
conference ensured that they were familiar with the programme
and could play an active role as facilitators throughout the
day.
In
between presentations that focused on recent success as well
as plans for the future were energiser activities and a lively
motivational presentation from Nigel Risner that included
audience participation and lots of laughs. 
