Group Organisational Development Manager – ANSA McAL Group
I had the pleasure of attending Felicia’s workshop at HRMAB’s The Future of Work Conference held in October 2017. The session title was “You Fired Your Father..What Now?” and I figured the workshop would focus on diversity and the implications for organisations of the changing workforce.
I always try to manage my expectations when attending conferences because in most cases the time allocated for workshops typically leaves very little time for the presenter to delve deeply into the subject matter. Felicia’s presentation however turned this assumption on its head. Firstly, rather than focus purely on the issue of diversity she addressed the most critical underlying challenge for organisations which is essentially how they deal with change; especially the rapidly changing make-up of the workforce, one of the major changes organisations are having to wrestle with. What made Felicia’s presentation stand out was that she very quickly got participants working on how to go about managing change using diversity as a solution, rather than a problem, in a structured way providing us with her firms’ extremely comprehensive tool for doing so. This was a pleasant surprise as suppliers are usually quite guarded about sharing their work in such a forum. I happened to be sitting with one of my work colleagues who was just about to embark on a major change in her company and so this made for the perfect opportunity to put the tool to the test. As someone familiar with managing change I found the tool both detailed, user-friendly and comprehensive as it guided the user through the entire process from identification right through to execution. The workshop exceeded my initial expectations as I was able to walk away with a practical tool I could immediately put into action.