This event is now FULLY BOOKED and we have closed the Waiting List.
If you are interested in similar event in the future,please email us.
This event is now FULLY BOOKED and we have closed the Waiting List.
If you are interested in similar event in the future,please email us.
In partnership with
Date: Tuesday March 5th, 2024
Time: 09:45 - 16:00
Location: Linbury Suite, Worcester College, Walton Street, Oxford, OX1 2HB
Guy Osmond
Osmond Ergonomics
As founder of Osmond Ergonomics, Guy has been involved in the field of staff wellbeing for over three decades and has been talking about the connection between mental and physical health for nearly 20 years.
Inclusive Wellbeing – the holistic approach
As employers seek to provide the ideal conditions for their people to perform at their best, it is important for interdepartmental collaboration and a strategic approach that encompasses both people and place. Guy will set the scene for today’s discussions.
Andy Lake
Author, Beyond Hybrid Working, and Director, Flexibility.co.uk
Andy is a specialist in Smart Working, and has worked on dozens of implementations and evaluations across the private, public and voluntary sectors. He is the author of Beyond Hybrid Working – A Smarter and Transformational Approach to Flexible Working (Routledge, 2024) and numerous other publications exploring Smart Working and the future of work. He has led or participated in numerous research projects looking at the impacts of new ways of working and service delivery on business, government, transport, housing, and the environment.
Andy has worked as an advisor with the UK Cabinet Office and the European Commission. He was the technical author for British Standards PAS3000: Code of Practice for Smart Working. Andy also runs the Smart Work Network (www.smart-work.net), a peer collaboration network for people implementing Smart and Flexible Working in their organisations, and is Director of Flexibility.co.uk.
Beyond Hybrid Working
Navigating complexity and flexibility in a fast-changing world
The nature of work is changing fast, and many organisations are struggling to navigate their way forwards. Andy Lake will offer an approach to help organisations move beyond the often simplistic and one-size-fits-all solutions of Hybrid Working. This requires taking a strategic and benefits-focused approach, rather than focusing on just two locations of work (the home and the office).
Work and the work experience need to improve, wherever and whenever people are working across the “Extended Workplace”. That means transformational change is needed across the fields of People, Workplace and Technology, with a strong focus on creating the best conditions to enhance wellbeing and to reduce the environmental footprint of working practices.
Often forgotten in the debates about the future of work are the 50+% of people whose work is hands-on, site-specific or directly customer-facing. So this presentation will also address the issues of fairness and flexibility, and how to address the workplace needs and aspirations of frontline workers. In the end, we need tools to navigate complexity, based on sound evidence, to face the future with confidence.
Steven Howe
Bakker Elkhuizen
Steven is UK Manager for our co-sponsors, Bakker Elkhuizen, a Dutch company which has been developing workplace wellbeing products and software for nearly 30 years.
Ergonomics for a mobile world
During the early days of pandemic lockdown, many organisations made frantic efforts to meet the physical needs of their personnel with chairs, desks and accessories. However, much of that activity has slowed (or stopped) and many products purchased in a hurry may not live up to long-term use. Today, everyone is talking about wellbeing but there are still millions of knowledge workers toiling at their kitchen table with just a laptop.
Steven will demonstrate some of the most effective products to address physical health and wellbeing in an evolving workplace.
Dr Nigel Oseland
Workplace Unlimited
Nigel is an environmental psychologist, workplace strategist, change manager, researcher, international speaker and published author with 11 years research and 25 years workplace consulting experience. Nigel draws on his psychology background and his own research to advise occupiers on how to redefine their workstyles and rethink their workplace to create working environments that enhance individual and organisational performance, delivering maximum benefit. He specialises in strategic briefing and change management to help create workplaces that meet psychological needs and facilitate collaboration, creativity and concentration. Nigel has advised corporate businesses, public sector bodies and educational institutions in the UK and throughout EMEA. He has published over 100 papers on occupant requirements and several books.
Designing for the average: The flaw of standards
Nigel presents on the flaws of standards, and workplace designs, that base occupant requirements on the average person. Such an homogeneous approach takes no account of individual psychological and physiological factors and how they vary with age, gender, culture, personality, neurodiversity, personal circumstances and other sociodemographic variables. In a world that endorses equity, diversity and inclusion, a successful workplace must accommodate the needs of the full range of its occupants rather than a non-existent average person.
Rosie Russell
MeiraGTx
Rosie is a Co-President of IIRSM and has spent much of the last 30 years in, and around, laboratories in Universities, Biotech/Pharma Companies and Research Institutes. She has worked as a Research Chemist, Lab Manager and, for the last 20 years, in Environment, Health and Safety Roles. She takes a ‘whole person’ view of health, safety and wellbeing as she has said that ‘Wellbeing is more than your physical health, it must encompass your mental health and who you are as a person. After all, how can you have positive wellbeing if you are not in the right frame of mind?’ She believes that the ‘traditional’ workplace, while designed to be a ‘one size fits all’, is, for the most part, a ‘one size fits none’ as we employ people not automata.
Mental health management in a neurodiverse environment
Mental wellbeing needs more than a cup of tea and a walk round the block. So much energy is being put into organisation-wide initiatives to help employees manage their mental health and wellbeing, yet most organisations have not stopped to think that up to 20% of employees are just wired differently. In a world of PCs, there are a few Macs dotted around. Full of potential but their needs are just different.
While mental health and wellbeing needs to be acknowledged and managed at the organisational level, we should start by understanding our people and have the tools available to create an environment where everyone can reach their potential.
Rosie will cover the most common types of neurodiversity and give practical advice on how to make improvements that benefit everyone.
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