Special Guest: Aaron Betesta Aaron runs the team building brand ‘Laughtercise’. After two years of studying the team building market and delivering team building sessions, he believes that some approaches to team building are stuck in the 90s. At Laughtercise, they believe most team building and icebreaker resources on Google are poor, and are working hard to provide better. Their approach is to shake things up. They want to support people to take the forced out of forced fun and get rid of the cringe factor when it comes to team building activities. At Laughtercise, they deliver wild and fun team building sessions to organisations all over the UK. All the exhilaration of drinking games, but without the alcohol! They have also delivered over £10,000 worth of sessions, for free, to NHS Trusts and Charities. In this episode, Aaron wants to shake up your thinking when it comes to team building and team away days and provide you with creative insights. Most importantly, his  goal is to convince you to ditch the word ‘icebreaker’ and never ever use it again! So, shall we break the ice…? The 6 Unusual Team Building Activities Icebreaker Research Host: Jo Dodds

Jo Moffatt and Jo Dodds visited the CIPD Festival of Work 2019 and in Jo M's words 'accosted people' to get their views as to what #onechange they want to see happen in organisations to improve employee engagement. This special show is the result. Also available on our Engage for Success YouTube channel.  

Special Guest: Paul Nuki, CEO and Co-Founder of StepJockey Join us as we talk about how StepJockey works with some of the UK's largest corporates to make their offices more productive and less sedentary. Paul Nuki is a co-founder and CEO of StepJockey, a digital health business dedicated to improving workplace health through behavioural interventions that maximise staff engagement. StepJockey works with some of the UK's largest corporates to make their offices more productive and less sedentary. Host: Jo Dodds

Special Guest: Adam Hutchison, Managing Director, Belmont Sandbanks Care Group & Author of Risk v Reward Join us as we challenge perceptions and talk about how employee engagement can drive business performance in traditionally difficult sectors. Adam Hutchison is Managing Director at Belmont Sandbanks Care Group, having previously been a management consultant and worked in the call centre sector. We’ll be exploring the themes of Adam’s book, Risk v Reward, and talking about how to attract and engage workforces in sectors where they are traditionally undervalued and low paid. We will discuss how this can really power business success – and, importantly, in the healthcare sector improve patient outcomes. What lessons for the wider business world can we learn from success in these tougher, ‘hard to reach’ sectors? Whose responsibility is it to make this happen? Host: Jo Moffatt

Special Guest: Michael Moran, CEO and Founder at 10Eighty Few organisations focus on the careers of their people but it's vital to their engagement and your business performance. Join us as we discuss why it's important to enable your managers to have ongoing career discussions with their people. Michael’s background is in Human Resources, having worked in the NHS and Financial Services sector. He has successfully run HR consultancies specialising in career management for the last 20 years. He is passionate about helping people maximise their potential and believes everyone should have job satisfaction and a successful career. He helps organisations design jobs and career paths that maximise employee engagement. As an avid reader/commentator on the world of work and sport, he regularly draws parallels between the two. Michael’s favourite scribe is Matthew Syed, Times sports correspondent and author of ‘Bounce’. You could describe Michael as a budding author with “The Guide to Everlasting Employability” already under his belt, and technophile who’s created 2 career management apps to help people manage their careers.  He’s a season ticket holder of Derby County which helps build his resilience given their inconsistent performances and he’s a proud father of Hannah, 10Eighty’s Business Development Exec, and Tom who’s currently on active service in Calgary chasing tanks. Host: Jo Dodds

Special Guest: Jemma Peers, Client Services Director, Top Banana As more baby boomers work past retirement age and tech-savvy millennials enter the workforce, the variety of values, communication styles and work habits amongst employees is vast. This can quickly become a barrier to trust and communication – both vital for positive workplace cultures and organisational productivity. With the employee age of a UK company potentially now ranging from 17 to 70, is it possible to unite five generations into one harmonious workforce? Join Jemma Peers, Client Services Director at events and communications specialists Top Banana, who will share her thoughts on how to communicate with and get key business messages across to every single member of the team…whether they’re pushing 70 or skimming 20. Join us as we talk about how businesses can tell a story, how to make it matter to every person in the room and what tools and tactics can be used to bring strategy to life in original ways. Jemma joined Top Banana back in May 2016 bringing a wealth of live event experience and bags of energy to her role. Leading a team of event professionals in her role as Client Services Director, Jemma’s skills lie in taking an objective or a challenging situation and creating the perfect solution, evoking emotions and embracing all things new and creative. She understands the dynamics of live events, is creative in her thinking and builds strong relationships with her clients … who trust her to deliver strategically driven events. Host: Jo Dodds

Special Guest: Beth Stallwood, Director & Lead Consultant, Transforment You’re on the engagement train. You’ve championed the importance, sold the benefits and you’ve got the leaders on board. Perhaps you’ve even done a survey and have the results. You want to act… But what do you focus on? Of course, taking action is critical (and there’s no point investing in surveys if you don’t do anything with the results!) but the survey only tells a part of the story. In this show, Beth will talk about taking a pause to observe what’s really going on. Join us as we discuss that adding insight to data and considering where to act will help you make the most difference to employee engagement in your organisation. With practical tips and techniques, Beth will guide you on what to look and listen for to help you work out what to do. Beth is an organisational and people development expert, with an impressive track record of enabling businesses to achieve results by transforming the way they develop, engage and lead their people. She has a reputation for being an impactful presenter, engaging facilitator and leadership coach. By getting under the skin of organisations, she develops and delivers practical solutions that are right for the business – whatever the product, service or sector. A real relationship-builder and stakeholder-influencer at all levels, she intuitively adapts to meet the needs of individuals, teams and organisations. Host: Jo Dodds

Special Guest: Andy Cast, Director of HR Business Partnering, University of Southampton In this modern world where the employee seems to have all the power, it's important for us all to remember that with all the employment rights we covet and expect, employment responsibilities shouldn't be forgotten. Join us as we discuss how it's all too easy for us to become reliant on managers or employers to do everything for us, but when we become the child in a parental relationship we start being done to, rather than done with and that leads to a loss of reasonable employee voice. Andy Cast is the Director of HR Business Partnering at the University of Southampton, managing the HR Business Partner and Employee Relations Teams.  A qualified mediator, counsellor and executive coach, Andy has a passion for people development and firmly believes in the balance of rights and responsibilities when it comes to employee engagement. Andy’s career has been varied, having worked for 18 years within the retail sector at John Lewis and Waitrose, owned his own restaurant, worked for Carnival UK and also a two year stint as the Learning and Development Director for Emphasis HR Consultancy. In his spare time, Andy is a non-executive director at The Southern Co-Operative community food stores and funeral homes group, the Founder and Campaign Director for the LGBT Rights Charity, Holding Hands 4 Equality and enjoys sharing his random thoughts about life in his blog. Host: Jo Moffatt

Special Guest: Meghan Walsh, Internal Communications & Employee Engagement Manager, Comic Relief Meghan has a unique challenge of boosting engagement and development with little or no budget available. People that work for Comic Relief have a huge sense of pride to do so, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t have some of the same business challenges as many organisations. After receiving some insightful feedback via their engagement survey in 2015 it was clear that collaboration was a challenge within the business. Join us as we talk about how Meghan put collaboration back at the heart of Comic Relief using a mix of engagement initiatives and events all of which were delivered with minimal cost. The results saw a 30% increase in their engagement score in the area on collaboration. Meghan has a lot of plans around further cross organisational engagement and after recently taking on the Learning & Development function at Comic Relief, looking how the current development offering can be improved and how this plays into the overall engagement plan. Meghan started at Comic Relief in November 2014 initially to upgrade and gain engagement in their new intranet tool on a 12 month contract, but was then asked to stay and look at the wider internal communication and employee engagement activity for their core 250 staff. Meghan started her career in the retail sector and has worked in operations and communications at brands such as Ann Summers, Hobbs London and Kookai. Previous to this she graduated from Glasgow Caledonian University with a degree in Marketing. Host: Jo Moffatt

Special Guest: Nell Sanders, Head of People at Sleeping Giant Sleeping Giant Media is a multi-award winning Digital Marketing Agency based in Kent. Providing solutions such as Search Engine Optimisation, Paid Advertising, Social Account Management and Video solutions, Sleeping Giant Media are currently celebrating their 8th year in operation. They work with clients on a local, national and international basis, and have developed two stand alone companies - Giant Campus and Pocket Giant - that deliver these services as training and as a service provision for companies wishing to expand their offerings. Nell Sanders first joined Sleeping Giant Media in 2014, and has benefited from the company’s support and engagement; going from a new starter position to Head of People in two short years. She now leads the recruitment and retention strategies within the company, ensuring an engaged and effective workforce to support the business in their success. Join us as we talk about how engaging the creative workforce has encouraged and supported the high rate of growth for the company, and will continue to be the success of Sleeping Giant Media. Host: Jo Moffatt

Special Guest: Erwin Van Waeleghem, International Speaker, Global Seedplanter of www.tealspirator.com Erwin talks about the possible cultural transformation an organisation, and its top management, can make towards the ‘teal’-paradigm, where working collaborations are based on trust, respect, authenticity, integrity, benevolence, equivalence, human connection, and other basic human values and soft-skills, which in a lot of organisations are never talked about, let alone used as a base for success. Join us as we talk about how inspiring leaders’ biggest contribution is based on making other inspiring leaders which is inside all people. Host: Jo Moffatt

Special Guest: Luke Fisher, Founder & CEO of Thanksbox ThanksBox is a digital communication platform that connects a business's most important asset, it's people. We offer a range of tools which replace and digitise existing processes to make them smarter and more inclusive. This helps create a stronger sense of engagement for employees while gathering real-time data based insights for management. ThanksBox has recently had a case study written by the CIPD, about their work with the NHS on cultural transformation. A big part of this was using digital technology and smart insights to engage their employees. Join us as we discuss the case study and how you can drive engagement and improve culture with digital. Luke is Co-Founder and CEO at Thanksbox and is a passionate believer that people provide the only long term competitive advantage for an organisation. His main aim at ThanksBox is to revolutionise the relationship between employers and employees – helping to maintain personalisation at scale. He loves talking about people insights, digital technologies and the future of work. Thanksbox provide a suite of digital tools for employees to share ideas, offer feedback, complete surveys and recognise each other.   Host: Jo Dodds Archive available here

Special Guest: Katy Downes, Senior Engagement Manager, Network Rail Join us as we discuss the 'You Said, We Did' campaign that Network Rail have used to develop their employee voice. With over 15 years’ experience in employee reward gained across both private and public sectors, Katy now leads the Employee Engagement at Network Rail. Understanding what motivates individuals is a key strength in the engagement field and recognising that changes in behaviours are individual to each employee is also important in driving the Network Rail engagement strategy. Katy has also recently joined the Engage for Success taskforce. Host: Jo Dodds

Join us as we discuss how Mike believes that the overly close relationship between Internal Communications and Employee Engagement doesn't serve either of them very well. Mike goes into companies and helps identify business problems that focused communication can tackle. As Author and Principal of Changing the Terms, Mike consults, writes, blogs and speaks on strategic communication and the role of internal influencers as a potential driver of acceleration and impact.  Recent projects include external positioning for Europe-based communication start-ups, M&A-related internal and external communications work for a global Fortune 500 player in packaging materials, and delivering networking workshops for communication leaders. Vice Chair, Europe – Middle East – North Africa region, IABC. Host: Jo Dodds

Special Guest: Fran Woodward, Director People & Culture, Good Energy It can be challenging growing a small business with high ethical standards, in a highly price competitive market. through some of the key steps we have taken, and share some of our successes and learnings. Join us as we talk about how Good Energy have focused on building their culture to ensure it aligns with their purpose and values, and enables them to achieve their significant growth ambitions. Fran explains the key steps they have taken and shares some of their successes and learnings. Fran joined Good Energy in June 2014 with responsibility for human resources and organisation development, including training and facilities. Having begun her career with Marks & Spencer plc, she has over 20 years multi sector industry experience including senior human resources roles within the Coca-Cola Company, Dyson and EDF Energy. Fran is a graduate from Oxford University and a Chartered Member of the Institute for Personnel and Development. Host: Jo Moffatt

Special Guest: Jennifer Sproul, Chief Executive, Institute of Internal Communication IoIC has recently partnered the Engage for Success movement. Join us as we talk about the latest developments at the Institute across professional development, thought leadership, career development, events and awards. In particular Jennifer will be talking to us about their new Profession Map which sets out the purpose for internal communication to ‘create an informed, engaged & connected workforce to drive organisational performance’. She will give us more detail behind this thinking, to include a new competency framework and also tell us more about the recent developments to highlight the importance of internal communication for employee engagement. Jennifer is responsible for the leadership of IoIC, the only independent professional body solely dedicated to internal communication. IoIC is the voice of internal communication, setting standards for more than 65 years through qualifications, career development, thought leadership and best practice.   Prior to joining IoIC, Jennifer has worked for over 15 years in professional associations, most recently as Strategic Marketing & Sales Director at the Market Research Society, developing and leading on activities across marketing communications (both internal & external), careers, membership, professional development and publishing. Host: Jo Moffatt Listen live here (archive available)

Special Guest: Charlotte Dahl, Creative Planning Director, Woodreed and Co-Founder of Muse. "Islands of brilliance within a sea of mediocrity" is how Drew McMillan, Head of Internal Communication & Engagement at Virgin Trains describes the state of the internal comms profession in the UK. Join us as we discuss the challenges IC practitioners face and what can be done about them. Charlotte Dahl is Creative Planning Director at Woodreed and co-founder of Muse. She is a marketing and communications professional with a wealth of experience in both advertising and internal communication. She’s worked for some of the world’s most successful ad agencies and latterly works for specialist advertising agency Woodreed where she fuses her passion for brands with employee engagement. Host: Jo Dodds

Special Guest: Ali Godding of aligodding.com In this show we will be joined by Ali Godding, who has recently re-joined the Engage for Success Core Team as our Career Development Director. Join us as we discuss how employee engagement can help individuals improve their own career opportunities. Ali is also founder and creator of The Career Leap, a programme specifically designed to help you ascend, adapt and accomplish in your career. You can register to attend one of her complimentary trainings here: www.aligodding.com Host: Jo Moffatt

Special Guests: Arnaud Henneville - Founder of Internaldesk and Kristian Cholmondeley - Head of Sales Development, Citroen Join us as we talk about how Citroen have been using the platform, internalDesk, to engage their employees and underpin their evolving brand strategy over the last two years. About internalDesk: internalDesk is more than a platform for collaboration and internal communication. It is the only platform on the market you, your agency or your advisory firm can customise to help you achieve your goals. internalDesk clients include GE, Peugeot-Citroën, Absolut, Atlas Copco, UPM. Kris has worked at the PSA Groupe for 13 years and has a wide breadth of experience across Sales and Marketing roles. He believes it’s vital to lead by example, put the customer first and embrace the fact that the only thing that is constant in today’s business world, is change. The PSA Groupe is a global automotive company that encompasses the Citroën and Peugeot brands. And, excitingly and more recently, it launched DS Automobiles, its first premium brand, and has acquired Opel/ Vauxhall. Host: Jo Dodds