Highly Commended - getAbstract Impact Award for Inspiring a Lifelong Learning Culture
Learning at Work Week (LAWW) brought colleagues together to look at the tools, techniques, knowledge, and skills to help them, and therefore the organisation, achieve short and longer-term goals and aspirations, to create the future they’d like. This supported the organisation’s objective to develop its people to reach their potential by providing blended learning opportunities and digital solutions.
LAWW was a real collaborative initiative, although led by the organisation’s L&D Academy team, colleagues from across the business got involved to offer a wide range of creative, informative and impactful sessions to support each other to be future ready. The sessions were delivered and hosted by volunteers within the organisation and external instructors. They used a blended, interactive approach, combining virtual sessions with digital materials and recommendations for continual learning. L&Qs DevelopMe toolkit was used by instructors to provide additional resources including blogs, videos, guides and quizzes to strengthen colleagues’ learning experience and share key takeaways.
The programme, that consisted of 21 activities, aligned to the 2023 theme ‘Create the future’. There were a variety of sessions, including:
• Think future: career sparks, coaching and mentoring, and create your future.
• Future fit: emotional resilience, cost of living crisis and financial health, and the science of wellbeing.
• Future skills: how to increase your productivity, introduction to problem solving, and digital tools for the future.
All activities were scheduled well in advance, to accommodate the geographically spread office and non-office-based colleagues. Because of this and extensive internal promotion through a variety of channels such as, meetings, internal social media, email banners and the intranet, the sessions were well attended. To maximise on exposure, the organisation’s Mental Health Awareness Week campaign, which ran at the same time, also promoted wellbeing focused activities for Learning at Work Week.
As a result of LAWW, colleagues have gained valuable insights, which they can apply when working on projects and initiatives. They have also become more confident by having access to the right tools to successfully manage their career, including having a better understanding of coaching and mentoring relationships.
Colleagues have also learned strategies to build resilience, mindfulness, work remotely and continually learn. LAWW also gave the L&D Academy and colleagues the opportunity to expand their relationships, which will support colleagues through their change journey.
LAWW helped to progress and strengthen several objectives in L&Q’s five-year strategy. Among them, it has supported L&Q’s leadership mission to ensure the organisation’s team flourish both mentally and physically. It has strengthened L&Q’s value proposition which will help the organisation to attract talent, retain its people and develop their potential. And it has reinforced good working practices and environment so that colleagues can thrive.
All in all, LAWW has been a massive success for the organisation.