Facilitated by Innovating Works at the University of Strathclyde.
Title: What is Workplace Innovation and what can it do for your business?
Date: Thursday 22 August 2016
Location: Edinburgh Zoo.
Facilitated by Innovating Works at the University of Strathclyde.
Title: What is Workplace Innovation and what can it do for your business?
Date: Thursday 22 August 2016
Location: Edinburgh Zoo.
The Workplace Innovation Masterclass Series supported by Scottish Enterprise is a programme of interactive events enabling businesses and their partners to discuss the ideas behind workplace innovation, its practical application, and its potential to deliver benefits for business.
Our first Workplace Innovation Masterclass took place on Thursday 22 August at Edinburgh Zoo.
A full programme for the morning can be downloaded hereand presentation slides from the event can be downloaded from here.
We were delighted to be joined by Paul Wheelhouse MSP, Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy, to launch the Workplace Innovation Masterclass Series and Scottish Enterprise broader programme of work supporting workplace innovation.
Our first Workplace Innovation Masterclass focused on the business benefits that can flow from workplace innovation and particularly how employers can design jobs to improve employees' working lives and unleash innovative potential.
Our Speakers
Professor Patricia Findlay, Director of the Scottish Centre for Employment Research and Innovating Works Team at Strathclyde Business School and Member of the Fair Work Convention.
Patricia shared insights from her own research and the international evidence on what works in promoting workplace innovation and fair work. She outlined how workplace innovation has become a key priority for EU and Scottish policymakers and why it matters for Scottish businesses. She discussed a range of workplace innovation practices that have been adopted by businesses - including aspects of organisational development, employee engagement, leadership and HR practice - and will highlight evidence from Scotland, the UK and EU on how workplace innovation has delivered benefits for employees and businesses. She specifically focused on we can design jobs to encourage innovation, drawing on practical examples from international evidence of how building better jobs produces benefits for people and businesses.
You can see Patricia Findlay discussing why workplace innovation matters here:
John Reid, General Manager, Michelin Dundee.
John led a discussion of the practical challenges and benefits of engaging and empowering employees through job redesign, drawing in his own experiences as General Manager at Michelin Dundee's plant, which employees 900 people, and produces up to 1,000 tyres per hour, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Since 2010, John has overseen a major transformation of the site bringing significant investment, the installation of new machinery, the recruitment of an extra 140 production workers, and the agreement of a ground breaking 'flexibility mechanism' with the workforce. Dundee is now one of the benchmark plants amongst Michelin's European group.
You can see John Reid discussing Michelin Dundee's expansion here:
Lindsay Macpherson, Director of Human Resources at The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.
As well as welcoming us to Edinburgh Zoo, Lindsay discussed her team's commitment to progressive workplace practices covering the up to 320 RZSS employees at the Zoo and beyond. She spoke about some of the changes that RZSS has made in people management to empower employees at RZSS and promote innovative workplace practices.
You can read more about RZSS in People Management here.
You will be able to find further updates about Masterclass 1 on this website and you can join the discussion on our dedicated LinkedIn Discussion Forum.