Masterclass 6

Facilitated by Innovating Works at the University of Strathclyde

Title: Managing People for Workplace Innovation

Date: Thursday 02 November 2107

Location: Best Western Invercarse Hotel, 371 Perth Road, Dundee, DD2 1PG.


HR and people management can play a crucial role in supporting employees to innovate and contribute to business performance. HR practices that support upskilling and collaboration can help people to develop and share ideas and solve problems together. But we also know that sometimes HR can get bogged down in process and constrain employees' creativity.

How can Scottish businesses ensure that their HR and people management practices support workplace innovation? Our latest Workplace Innovation Masterclass will provide opportunities to share good practice and network with innovative businesses. We will also have keynotes from leading business innovators and experts.

The programme for this event can be downloaded here and the presentation slides can be downloaded here.

Our Speakers

Sandy Begbie is Director, Global People, Organisation and Culture Integration at Standard Life Aberdeen, holding this role since the successful merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management on 14 August 2017. He is also the Lead Executive for the Joint Venture Heng An Standard Life in China and the Asia business based in Hong Kong. Sandy joined Standard Life in May 2010 as the Group Transformation Director. He is the Chairman of Career Ready, Scottish Advisory Board (SAB) and also Chairs the new Regional Developing Young Workforce (DYW) group to tackle Edinburgh and Lothian youth unemployment. He was recently appointed as a NED to the Open University Board.

Dr Kristina Potocnik is Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of Edinburgh Business School. Managing individual and team-level innovation has been one of her core research interests for the last seven years. Specifically, in her research, Kristina has looked at issues related with identifying individual innovation potential to help businesses select and train their employees to excel at their innovative attempts. She has conducted research on how context shapes team creativity and innovation for businesses to understand how to design their teams and work context to enhance their innovative capacity. She has advised numerous organisations on how to nurture their employee creativity and consequently boost their innovation.

Paul Succony is UK Total Supply Chain Director, Farne Salmon and Trout Lyons Seafoods. Paul's significant experience lies in manufacturing roles in short shelf-life chilled food. He is responsible for the entire supply chain from end-to-end in both Farne Salmon and Trout Ltd in Duns and Lyons Seafoods in Warminster. Together these businesses employ 1000 people and strive to deliver a fulfilling work life for every person. At the recent 2017 Business Insider Scotland's Best Employer Awards, Farne Salmon won the Scottish Employer of the Year, Best Health and Wellbeing and Best Work Environment awards. Paul will demonstrate how adopting HR practices that innovate the workplace benefited his people and business performance. He will reflect on his career, sharing key moments which shaped his approach to leadership. He will show how leadership rather than management achieves sustainable results.