#cipdace16 blog 1

So here we go again. First blog from #cipdace16. I'm lucky and pleased to be part of the Blogsquad again which is a great honour but also a very tiring one. Blogging, tweeting and frequently posting on other social media all day long, coupled with an early start, lots of networking and a late finish due to the press dinner and other social activities mean I'll be absolutely knackered later and probably grumpy tomorrow. 

Anyway. 

I'm here both days and intend summarising my views on most of the sessions I get to along with other conference and exhibition happenings. Im also likely to be lurking around the Press Office and through the Exhibition regularly so if you see me, stop me and say hello. 

I'll also be tweeting, posting on Instagram and maybe even doing face swaps on Snapchat.

I'll also repeat my bargain from last year (unsuccessful I may add) that if any exhibitors will offer me a neck and shoulder massage (either from a qualified therapist or not, I'm not fussy) then I will frequent your stand and promote it heavily via said social media outlets.

I have NO shame. 

To the conference itself. 

Opening speech is Peter Cheese as usual. 

Peter started off by referencing the US election results and comparing the impact to that felt after the Brexit vote. His take on this is that we are not all in the same place, and not everyone's voice is being heard, and that gives us new challenges but also new opportunities in the future world of work.

 

Peter talked about the future of work needing to be good for people, and the challenges posed by all of the world changing around us, making it difficult to achieve our goals.

 

Peter asserted that the future of work is about fairness, opportunity and transparency. It's about productivity and skills, about diversity and inclusion, and about wellbeing and engagement. He's right, and he's also right that HR and the CIPD have a key role to play in shaping these agendas.

 

He talked about how the HR profession is evolving and how it needs to further evolve, topics I have very recently blogged on. He says we have to become experts on people and organisational behaviour, and stay strong to our principles and professional identity.

 

He then handed over to Margaret Heffernan for her keynote opening speech.

 

Margaret's talk covered some of the same ground on the future of work. Her opening analogy on productivity was interesting in that it drew on a lot of evolutionary theory, citing Darwin that it's not survival of the strongest or fittest, it's survival of the most adaptable. She claimed that many people have this theory the other way around but I'm not sure they do. She's making a good point though that the key to survival and productivity has been with us for a long long time.

 

She talked about teams being successful, where the most successful teams get the best from each team member and are well balanced in terms of gender. She noted that research showed that the better teams have more women in them.

 

She also noted that organisations and teams across the world excel when their team members display helpful behaviours and are helpful to other people in the team.

 

Does your team and its members display this trait? Can you measure it? If so, how?

 

Much of the trait of helpfulness made me think of the oft referred to term of Personal Learning Networks (PLN) - in essence a very loose team but I find my own PLN exceptionally helpful and am pleased to be helpful in return. I'd characterise my PLN as exceptionally successful in achieving my own learning goals, but much of this is based on my ability to select it's members and to quietly dispose of them if I don't find them helpful.

 

Of course, as a manager I have this power, but it's not as easy as that, particularly if you're one senior leader amongst many and the team in question is that senior team you are part of.

 

Heffernan talked about nodes, people in organisations who know everyone and everything. I call these people hubs in my own thinking, but she talked about maximising the potential of these hubs or nodes and has found that by encouraging these people to take regular coffee and networking breaks raises the productivity of both the hub person and those they come into contact with.

 

As network theory goes, that's good stuff.

 

So, taking time away from work makes you more productive when you get back to it.

 

I've found that too but it's refreshing to see someone else mention it. Although the concept of FIKA has been well researched and it's something I've yet to implement in my own workplace, but maybe I should.

 

She built on this by saying you can measure the success of an organisation by looking at how long it takes for important information to get around that organisation.

 

That's an interesting measure of success. When I examine culture in an organisation I encourage people to look at HOW information moves around the organisation, but not necessarily how FAST. So that's an interesting perspective.

 

The nodes or hubs are critical in this dissemination of information, and I'd urge you to remember that these people can spread bad news and harmful gossip just as quickly as they can spread good news. So be careful who you use as nodes and for what purpose.

 

She also talked about the nature of the world now and the pace of change being such that business can only safely plan perhaps two years ahead. I once spoke to someone who worked in the nuclear decommissioning industry who was able to work on plans of 100+ years, so this will be a blow to her.

 

She's right though. Just look at what has happened in America overnight. Many organisations long term plans are now in disarray. It will be interesting to see how other speakers address similar issues in their workshops over the next two days. 

Heffernan also talked about how Microsoft have survived despite missing out on a number of key technological developments over the decades. She asserted that it's by having a growth mindset, in recent years at least, where every person feels they are there to learn and to grow, and look around the organisation to share mistakes and help each other learn from mistakes. She gave an excellent example of how the new Microsoft CEO made a public mistake and often cites this in his own learning journey, and will talk regularly to all employees about it in order to encourage greater learning from mistakes. 

She said one question we can ask people is who helped them get to where they are today. If they can cite a long list of people, great. If they refer to themselves, then we don't want them around. The former group of people are those who will help to build a more successful organisation, because you're acquiring their social capital which will impound your own. 

This puts managers in the role of casting actors in a play. If you can cast the best actors, you'll deliver the best play. 

Who would you cast? And who would you never cast again?

Food for thought. 

Till next time. 

Gary. 

Bazuka that VUCA...part 2 of 2

In the first part of this blog post, I discussed what types of roles I see emerging in the future of HR where we need, as Margaret Heffernan pointed out, fuse people, technology and innovation.  I also talked about what pressures and factors are causing this.

In this second and final part I'm going to talk about how this impacts on the DNA of HR and how we structure HR teams, aswell as how we can make practical choices about service delivery in the future.

I think the need to engage with multiple stakeholders, as I hinted about in the first part, changes the DNA of HR.

Its no longer enough to know about HR if you work in HR.  You will need to know and understand at least the basics of Finance, Marketing, IT etc and most importantly, you're going to need to know how people work and how they fit into organisational systems and networks both in and outside the company.

In many firms, particularly smaller ones, the most common HR delivery model is: traditional HR support; and everything else.

But its the everything else that I see as the growing and more important area.

Ulrich hints at what I think is the right model for many organisations with this quote: "HR outcomes are owned by the line, with HR professionals being architects of how to deliver these outcomes".  I think if you take this line of thinking to its natural conclusion, then HR is no longer a function but an area of practice - because at least every manager, if not every employee, plays a part in delivering what we currently look at as the traditional HR model.

This line hints at what I think HR needs to be - the ultimate generalist, not in an HR sense but in a business sense, working with all stakeholders in the business.

So how do we adapt what we do?

Mostly through a technological solution I think.

In many smaller organisations, HR system amount to just a Payroll system maybe with a few bolt-ons.  But even these are now evolving - many Payroll software companies are being left behind by the market and the rise of new and easily-accessible apps allow employees direct access to systems and platforms which changes what HR need to do.

We can now truly devolve transactional activities to the line using technology - give the line data, and information, to make decisions.  We can give the workforce the technology to make choices and manage/tailor their employment experience.

The success of companies like Uber and Airbnb show that it works when you give people direct access to service providers.  We are also used to sites like Facebook and Amazon customising our own user experience and using our data and activity to change what we see and do - so we could and should do the same for employees.

Taking this to a logical conclusion, I wonder if HR professionals, as knowledge workers, have a role delivering traditional HR any more - if an employee could simply Google or ask Siri to get them the information instead.

And for this reason I think the role of traditional HR is on the decline.

In HR, we need to grasp technology and use it - there are a lot of good examples of businesses doing good work here - I often cite Halton Housing Trust as one who is moving to a majority digital approach to service delivery with some good results (see HERE) - and if an organisation like HHT can do this for customers, can they / we do it for employees?

Yes we can.

In fact, we have to.

So, summing up...

• There are blurred lines in our future.  HR in the future isn't going to be defined by how much HR you do, but by how much HR you don't do and how much non-HR work you have knowledge and experience of
• Bye bye best practice. If we go down the route of individualising the employee experience then we can't say for certain that standardisation and consistency is a good thing.  Everyone will be and should be experiencing things differently.
• The key HR role will be to help people develop the ability to cope and thrive under pressure - to perform.  By looking at individual needs and using the available technology to customise the employee experience, we can do that

My middle child, when she was aged 3, once asked me what I did at work.  I don't know if you've ever tried explaining HR to an adult, let alone a 3 year old child, but I struggled with this and eventually settled on:

"My job is to make people happy at work"

She thought about this and toddled off, coming back a few minutes later with some paints and brushes.  Her rationale was that painting was what made her happy, so she assumed my job similarly involved painting.

But ultimately, she was right.  HR in the future is about unlocking what individuals want in order to make them feel happy and perform.

Its about painting a picture for an employee of how they can contribute and how we can help.

Do you paint?

Till next time...

Gary

PS in other news, its #CIPDACE16 next week and I'm very pleased to be part of the Blogsquad.  Watch out for social media output from me on various platforms on 9 & 10 November.

Bazuka that VUCA...part 1 of 2

A couple of weeks ago I was a speaker on a webinar discussing the future of HR along with Neil Morrison and Alan Moratelli from Core HR. The webinar was perfectly moderated by Georganna Simpson from and on behalf of People Management and you can listen to it HERE. 

In this blog I thought I might expand on some of the things I talked about, especially because it's #cipdace16 next week and several of the speakers are discussing this very topic, not least Margaret Heffernan as keynote speaker, whose interview in People Management was the prompt for the webinar in the first place. 

It was my first webinar and I really enjoyed it, despite a technical hitch that meant my slides kept going backwards after I moved them forwards! I'd definitely do it again and it taught me the impact of tone of voice when that's all you really have to distinguish yourself with. For me that means even more practicing. 

Anyway the webinar was inspired by Heffernans interview discussing the future of work, which she will expand upon at #cipdace16. I originally signed up as an attendee but got upgraded a few days earlier and decided I wanted to look at the future of HR primarily in SMEs (although this focus was eventually lost and it became more generic), drawing on my experiences of working in a few different places and what I've learnt from both conference speaking, blog and article writing and tutoring on CIPD qualifications. 

I detest the acronym VUCA. It's often bandied around by those wishing to appear trendy or cool but there's some validity in the concept. However if we are to cope with VUCA, and survive and deliver meaningful HR in this world there's a few things we need to note. Hence the title of this blog and my webinar talk. 

The Heffernan interview said that HR need to fuse technology, innovation and people. To me, this conjured up a picture of Inspector Gadget, but she's right and I think four main HR roles emerge that do this: 

1. Data analysts. We need HR professionals who can select and use the right data. Who can throw data sets together, correlate them, analyse them and predict trends. At the moment few can. 
2. Wellness advocates. Not just in an individual sense, but also in an organisational sense. We need HR staff who can be the guardians of organisational wellness, looking at systems of engagement and motivation and performance and how these all link together and complement each other. 
3. Engagement champions. Plenty of large firms like Netflix, and Virgin Group, are already ditching bureaucracy and encouraging HR to let go of policy and focus on the individual. We will need more of that, of social engagement in the workplace and looking at how people are treated and how they feel about work. 
4. Performance coach. An old role but a growing one for HR. Helping people to identify what performance actually is, and the best conditions under which to produce it. Clive Woodward spoke at last years CIPD Conference on this, and how he got players/employees to visualise being under pressure and practice performing under such conditions. He used the available technology to capture performance data and made sure players had the skills to analyse, share and discuss it. 

Heffernan also talked about the need to give people flexibility and develop adult-adult relationships. I agree, and there's a number of factors driving this that HR need to take account of (and many are, pleasingly): 

1. One size doesn't fit all. Many organisations are gearing up to deliver 24/7 services to customers who want that. This requires the ultimate flexibility and HR have to be able to lead organisations towards that by individualising the employment experience. And if you do that, the employees are likely to do the same for customers. I read that one organisation brought in a dating coach to train its staff how to flirt with each other and customers. I laughed, but then realised that's about making people feel special, wanted, unique. So I'm all for it, and here we are back at my oft-referred to analogy of HR being pimps for the employment relationship. 
2. The gig economy. Many employees will be spending a lower proportion of their working week with one employer, and may have multiple employers. This changes what HR teams have to do in terms of employee engagement and means we have to be more flexible. 
3. Demographics. Plenty of available data here about an older workforce and multiple generations at work but this does prompt us to think about how employees needs will change in what can now be a 65 year working life. An organisation I was in a senior HR role for built and maintained houses, and worked on component lifespans. So a house might last 100 years and in that time it may have 4 kitchens and 5 bathrooms. That helped with workforce planning, but if we are in human RESOURCES then maybe we have to look at employees in terms of their working lifespan. I look back at myself at age 16 and I was a completely different person with no interest in HR. I'm 41 now, and who's to predict what I will want to do age 66? I may have realised my dream of being a professional wrestler! But for certain, my learning needs and reward needs will have changed. How many HR teams segment their workforce in this way?
4. Localism. Devolution is gathering pace, and many organisations are now expected to collaborate at a local level on many things - employing more local people, delivering joined up services and addressing local skills needs. This requires a different set of HR practices. 

And in part two, coming later this week, I'll explore what kinds of HR practices and responses I think are appropriate in this future world of work. 

Till next time… 

Gary 

PS In other news, Florida looks a no go now, as eldest child is against the idea and we don't want to spend all that money to spend a fortnight with a surly teenager who may ruin it for everyone. Back to the drawing board…

Don't count people - make people count

I recently gave a talk at an event called Inclusive Workplaces, focusing on how SMEs can embed E&D into their business. I was a late substitute for a speaker who is an E&D specialist, and my talk built on what she was going to cover whilst looking at E&D from an HR perspective. The talk was well received and I've put the main points down here.

I worked in an organisation that really "got" E&D and inclusivity (I'll use the phrase E&D to refer to a broad spectrum of terms like inclusion etc) and on reflecting on this experience for the recent talk, I looked at what worked in that organisation and what I'd recommend if you are looking at how to embed E&D in your organisation.

In general though my view is that E&D is about having an amazing workplace - the two go hand in hand - and if you focus the right way on engagement then you'll get E&D, and vice versa.  But here's my building blocks:

• Commitment from the very top - we had a CEO and a Board who understood and were passionate about E&D, and kept it at the forefront of organisational thinking
• Someone to co-ordinate and pull everything together - we had one person to centrally manage E&D and keep all the various plates spinning (though this could be a double-edged sword later on)
• Involving the local community - there were lots of groups related to protected characteristics who were keen to help us develop services and employment
• External scrutiny and recognition - a plethora of organisations came to inspect us, grade us and recognise our practice, and this made us up our game
• Collecting and using data - going beyond compliance, we were able to explain regularly why we were collecting data and show examples of how we used it to drive service improvement and staff engagement
• Managing the supply chain - involving Procurement in creating guidance for our potential and actual suppliers, giving them a step by step approach to adopt our E&D principles, offering free training for their staff if they signed up to our commitments
• Comms team on board - we had a strong comms team who were bought into the vision and reality of an inclusive workplace, who helped us to promote events, campaigns and could highlight any successes we had
• Reviewing the employer brand - we did videos promoting inclusive employment practices on the recruitment microsite, case studies promoting positive action initiatives and more - we also made the whole website all singing and all dancing with information available in lots of different ways, media and formats
• Embedding into performance management - we broke E&D down down by service area with headline objectives for each area and individual objectives for staff that could be measured in appraisals, with a simple list of tasks that any member of staff could do to evidence getting involved in E&D activity
• Taking on public duties - we became a Hate Crime reporting centre (when we didn't need to) and this helped our public image aswell as bringing this important area to the fore
• Leading the community - we organised community events to celebrate diversity - this helped us set up support groups for both customers and staff linked to protected characteristics

Ultimately we made E&D about helping our customers, and not about looking at protected characteristics - it was our ethos, our culture and our values - and it wasn't something separate or different.

But there were drawbacks, as I noted in my talk:

• Relying too much on one person - we had an excellent person to co-ordinate it with a great deal of knowledge and enthusiasm aswell as a strong network of contacts - but when this person left, we found we couldn't get anyone to replicate this and the momentum was lost
• Allowing one PC to dominate to the exclusion of others - the strength of some community groups focused on the BME community compared to some other groups linked to other protected characteristics allowed them to dominate the agenda somewhat, out of proportion
• Pressuring staff to get involved just because they have a particular PC - we tried setting up a staff LGB group that contained the 3 LGB staff that we knew about - and not all of these were keen to be involved.  Sometimes we'd ask their opinion just because they were LGB, and that wasn't helpful
• Taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut - we ran some Trans awareness campaigns that were really powerful and illuminating, but we had no Trans staff or applicants and only a tiny % of Trans customers, so the vast majority of staff didn't get a chance to utilise their new knowledge
• Other organisations don't always share your enthusiasm - be careful if you work closely with another organisation in that this organisation may not have the same approach to E&D as you do, and if you end up merging with an organisation there may be real differences to explore and one of the organisations will need to radically change its approach, which may be painful

So we had an Inclusive Workplace, with lots of things that worked, and some lessons that I learnt along the way.  I'd sum up my thinking on inclusivity as follows:

• Have targets but don't let these get in the way of doing the right thing.  Use your E&D targets to evidence improvement and traction, rather than a stick to beat yourself with.
• Let staff get involved in decision-making and tailoring the organisational approach to E&D - celebrate any successes and make E&D as fun and informal as possible
• Dare to be different in your training - do drama-based workshops, and workshops on unconscious bias to help people understand the way they think
• Break down your available data on both staff and customers by protected characteristic and look for any trends - work to redress negative ones
• Allow people to voice any concerns they may have and have adult-adult conversations about E&D.  But if there are any instances of inappropriate behaviour - act upon and challenge these straight away.

I also think its true that you reap what you sow at work, in every sense.  If you're willing to put in the effort and energy to make your workplace amazing and inclusive, you'll achieve it.  If you're not, well, you won't, and it won't be as happy a place.

If you're going to have an inclusive workplace, focus on enriching the employee experience and make it an amazing place to work...

...So don't count people - make people count.

Carpool Karaoke

I've recently had a few conversations about mental resilience and wellbeing in the workplace.  I've reflected on what I do when I have a difficult day or set of circumstances to deal with at work.

We all have bad days.  In HR we probably have more than our fair share because at least part of what we do is helping others to deal with the bad days they are having, and some of that is bound to rub off emotionally.

Some people will deal with this better than others.  In wellbeing and HR circles this is often referred to as resilience, or mental toughness.

I'm not sure it is that, but what I do think happens is that those people have found outlets for their emotion and ways of processing it.  If that's resilience then OK, but to me resilience is something internal around personality, whereas I think what I'm describing is more outward facing around behaviour.

I've written a lot about my approach to personal fitness and how that has helped me in the past, and that's the kind of stuff I mean - just having some way of processing what you've been dealing with.  It doesn't have to be physical activity, as long as it works.

I also think having something of a support network matters too, not just at home where one would expect to have it, but at and in the workplace amongst your peers.

What do I mean?

Well, if you're without friends and people you can talk openly and honestly to in the workplace, you will struggle to process some of the emotion you are faced with there.  Everyone, no matter what their role, needs someone to whom they can talk and have a bit of a rant or moan to now and again, someone who will keep these discussions private and who will both support and challenge.

I noticed this when I moved jobs earlier this year - all of a sudden my support network at work was gone, that I'd spent 12 years building up, and I had to start all over again.  I found this very difficult, and it took 4 - 5 months before I had even the beginnings of a support network again and had that outlet.  But once I did, I immediately noticed a difference in how engaged I felt and how motivated I was.

Perhaps the best example of a support network I've ever had was a fellow senior leader at my last place of work, who car shared with me for over 10 years.  Spending 1.5 - 2 hours a day together in a confined space, 4/5 days a week for 10 years - you become close, you end up telling each other almost everything and you come to rely very much on that person as a source of support and guidance.

Most journeys home from work were each of us telling the other what we'd done that day and, on the occasions where we'd interacted in the workplace, discussing how those things had gone - discussing our views on other people's behaviour, our own behaviours, our view of the organisation and its direction, and almost everything to do with what was causing us to feel emotion at work.  We coached each other, challenged each other, argued occasionally but always felt much better at the end of the journey.  This helped me to download my emotion and get home able to focus on what was important there, without having to bore people at home with it all or being distracted by thoughts of home.

Nowadays I drive solo to work, but I still, almost a year since the car sharing ended, find myself talking out loud in the car to my no-longer-there car sharer friend and imagining his responses.  I have, once or twice, been on autopilot on my commute and realised I was headed to his house to collect him, before remembering we work in different towns now.

I watch James Corden's Carpool Karaoke videos and think these are an excellent example of people going to/from work having fun and sharing emotions, and usually arriving at work in a better state.

In my own carpool, we never did karaoke - neither of us could sing at all - but we gave each other a boost by just being there.  We were confidants for each other, and that's something that's hard to replace but if you can get it in the workplace, will be enormously helpful.

Until I find it again, I've still got my physical exercise regime.

What's your Carpool Karaoke?  How do you deal with a set of difficult circumstances at work and process the emotion so that you're able to focus on home life when you get back?

Till next time...

Gary

PS we think our next family holiday may be our last as a 5-piece family, as eldest son may be too old and too cool to come with us after next year. So we are thinking of stretching ourselves and doing a fortnight in Florida...

Back to school

So I'm studying to become a qualified Personal Trainer. This blog post will explain why, what's involved and how I see links with fitness training and other areas of my work.

I've long had an interest in fitness, but particularly in the last 7 or 8 years or so. My interests started on a very personal level as a quest for fitness and a changed image (both physically and mentally) of myself became part of how I reinvented myself after a difficult divorce, giving me motivation and fuel to become someone different, and better. I developed this into doing random endurance challenges to give focus to my fitness training, and learnt more about what fitness was and how to train. I've then developed this into racing in triathlons and from there fitness training has become a valued and indispensable part of my life.

I also have a professional interest in it. As a senior HR figure in several organisations I have had overall responsibility for health and wellbeing, and on occasion full blown health and safety too. I understand the links between physical and mental wellbeing, employee engagement, productivity and performance, and know that there is significant evidence to suggest that a fit and healthy employee (in every sense) will out perform one who is unfit and unhealthy. So I push these things at work too.

And I'm doing the qualifications to further my own knowledge and seek recognition or accreditation for the knowledge I already have. They are likely to help me improve my own training, and help me improve the health and wellbeing programmes I oversee in work.

I'm lucky enough to work for a qualifications provider so I can get easy access to the qualifications, and feel fortunate in this regard as access hasn't been easy in previous roles despite my enquiring!

I've blogged on the HRDirector magazine site HERE about employee wellbeing and how organisations need to be more proactive in promoting it. So I'm following my own advice. .

I've blogged also on Gem Dale's fitness blog HERE about my own approach to wellbeing and the backstory to why I'm interested in fitness. So here's the next chapter. 

There are actually two qualifications I'm completing, one after the other. The first is a Fitness Instructor qualification that in theory would allow me to run exercise classes in a gym. I'm mad keen to run my own spin class for anyone who will turn up and that looms large as a possibility now. The second is the conversion to Personal Trainer status and that would allow me to work individually with anyone wishing to improve their fitness. I'm looking forward to doing that too.

Professionally the qualifications will help me with my understanding of approaches to wellbeing in the workplace and particularly how individuals may benefit from a more tailored approach to wellbeing. They should help me to analyse organisational data on wellbeing and absence (etc) and suggest more appropriate and effective solutions.

They also should help me to coach leaders, something I do regularly anyway, but enabling me to offer a different dimension to looking at performance issues and their resilience etc. This is something Sukh Pabial blogged about very well HERE too. 

Of course, my blog is called The Power of Three and in the About Me page I talk a little bit about this holistic approach to individual development and performance coaching. So in essence all I'm doing is putting this into practice.

Speaking of practice, I'll need people to practice on when I'm doing the Personal Trainer part of it, so if you're interested in being a case study / guinea pig, let me know.

I promise I'll be as mean as you need me to be.

Which is only a little bit meaner than you want me to be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to change professions and become a full time personal trainer. But I wouldn't mind helping friends, family and colleagues in my spare time to become even better at health and fitness.

I'm hoping I'll be rather good at it.

I'll keep you posted on my studies.

Till next time.

Gary

PS in other news, we are already looking at 2017 holidays and it may be our final one as a whole family before at least one child gets too old (and too cool) to come with us. Now that makes me feel old…

Here we go again

So I'm going to the Ball...again. And by Ball I mean as part of the Blogsquad for #CIPDACE16 - the annual conference, exhibition and gathering of HR, OD and L&D professionals.

This is very exciting news for me, although I fully accept you may not be quite as excited.

Here's the full Blogsquad, with a "full house" theme this year which I'm sure I can pun my way through.

I was part of the Blogsquad last year, which I wrote about afterwards HERE.  But to be invited back again this year is tremendously exciting as well as ego-boosting - I enjoyed myself so much and felt I contributed a lot last year, and am looking forward to doing the same again this year.

Although the experience of being in the Blogsquad was exceptionally tiring, the positives far outweighed the negatives.  The Conference, the learning from it and the discussions I had with people about it and lots of other things were amazing.

And I love the CIPD Annual Conference.  I haven't missed a year since I first went in 2004, although I do still miss the small town feel that Harrogate had when the Conference more or less took over the town and in every hotel and bar you could find something going on that was HR-related.  But last year Manchester finally came into its own with a top notch programme and set of fringe and social activities (although all the ones I wanted to go to happened on the same evening, which was unfortunate).  As a Conference though you just can't beat it for sheer value and learning potential, even if - like me in years gone by and plenty of others - you just go to the exhibition and free seminars - nothing wrong with that at all and in fact you end up winning just because of the free stuff and learning you pick up.

A few days ago I asked, via social media, why other people go to the Annual Conference.  This is a selection of the quotes I got back, which perfectly illustrate the different reasons people go to the Conference and the different things they get out of it.

David D'Souza: "It has become an unwritten tradition that I'll find a way to humiliate myself, somehow, with the keynote speaker. So there was the awkward moment with Rita Gunther McGrath when I was introduced as 'the guy you've been tweeting about bubble wrap' just before she took the stage and the time I got star struck and asked Daniel Pink if I could move in with him. Both memorable, for different reasons."

Michelle Parry-Slater: "My stand out CIPD ACE moment was Peter Cheese and his "let them get on with their job, next question" statement when asked what he would do if an employee came to work with blue hair and tattoos #LoveIt"

Helen Amery: "My favourite memory is ACE 2013 when I was at the turning point in my career and I met so many great people from Twitter in real life for the first time. A whole new world was opening up to me and it was great to get out and discover more of it"

Mike Morrison: "For me its always the people."

Amy Humphreys: "I go for the atmosphere, the lovely people I get to hang with, and of course there's so much learning to be had!"

Darren Vann: "Going for the first time myself, was really just looking forward to the whole experience but now I'm keen to make sure I don't miss David D'Souza humiliate himself."

I understand what each person gets out of going.  Its the whole experience, and each year its different.  One year I got chatted up, and asked out for dinner, by a CIPD researcher whilst browsing books on their stand.  Another year I totally gatecrashed a fairly posh employment law networking event to which I wasn't invited, ate lots of food, had a drink and then made a dash for it.  Another year I came home LOADED with free gifts for my children and having won a £500 Red Letter Days voucher and some champagne.  EVERY year I make the most of the exhibition, talking to suppliers about what they're doing and how it interests me, catching up with people I've not seen for ages, attending the free seminars, and in recent years I've attended the full conference and got access to the premium content too.

This year's programme looks great, which you can view HERE.  There's so much to choose from and I feel like I want to be in 2 or 3 places at once.  Peter Cheese's introduction always contains a couple of soundbites that sustain many for an entire year, but the keynote speeches are different enough to offer lots of good insight.

The introduction of five different streams and five different types of session gives some structure but to be honest I don't think this was needed as the sessions kind of sell themselves without having the labels around them.  There's some good sessions available this year on what I think is the right range of topics.

The list of free seminars is also impressive and I'll genuinely struggle to decide where I need to be.

I'll be in and around the Conference for its entirety so if you see me wandering around the exhibition or sat in a conference session, please come and say hello.  Aswell as blogging about the content I'll be trying to capture people's views and reactions to the whole thing, so if you fancy appearing in print or on video - here's your chance.

And once again I'll repeat my promise from last year, that if any exhibitors have free neck/shoulder massages available on their stands (or even if they don't but its part of their sales technique) then I will visit and talk to you.  I'm that shallow.

Maybe you could even play Blogsquad Bingo and see if you can tick off the full house of bloggers if you manage to spot us all...

And it always feels like the start of Xmas when the Annual Conference gets underway, often because the Xmas Markets are being built just a few hundred yards away in Manchester.  Roll on November.

Till next time...

Gary

PS In other news, honeymoon has been and gone - astonishingly beautiful (but expensive) place, Norway - and I've decided I'd really REALLY like to live there.