Learning at Work Day: What are you doing?

TrainingZone

Learning at Work Day: What are you doing?

By TrainingZone

Workplaces around the country are making a public commitment to learning and skills for this year’s Learning at Work Day on 14 May.

Organiser Campaign for Learning is hoping that even more businesses will take part and join organisations including Flybe, WHSmith, The Royal Bolton Hospital, Epic, London South Bank University and CSC Computer Services Ltd.

Organisations taking part in Learning at Work Day 2009 include:

Elearning provider Epic will be joining forces with leading academics at Oxford University to upskill its workforce on Learning at Work Day. Epic staff, including learning designers, software developers and consultants, and Oxford University's leading experts in education will come together for a special seminar to discuss and debate how technology can be best deployed for future learning.

Airline Flybe's training centre in Exeter will be offering employees the opportunity to develop new and transferable skills through a series of 45-minute taster sessions on topics such as IT, Telephone Techniques and Teamwork.

Hounslow Homes, which manages over 16,500 homes for the London Borough of Hounslow, is offering a range of taster learning sessions for Learning at Work Day in partnership with Hounslow Adult Education. The session topics include healthy lifestyles, taking digital photos, reflexology and make-up & skincare.

London South Bank University's Staff Development Unit is expanding Learning at Work Day to a whole week offering activity sessions including Hello Brain', 'African Head Wrapping', 'Are You Sitting Comfortably?' delivered by the British School of Osteopathy and Digital Story Telling, a technique which helps people to express ideas.

The Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is putting on a range of taster sessions and topics such as literacy and numeracy, digital photography and hand and neck massage. They will also be launching the staff book club as part of the day.

Toshiba Information Systems (UK) Ltd in Plymouth will be focusing on learning and languages for Learning at Work Day 2009. Activities on offer include taster sessions on sign language, Holiday Spanish, Italian and Greek as well as information stands on evening classes that employees can sign up for. Short courses in popular foreign languages will be made available at the factory after hours for interested staff.

WHSmith will hold a week of learning activities for all employees to celebrate Learning at Work Day. There will be over 30 master classes on topics such as Leadership, Understanding the City, Managing Your Own Personal Success, and Retailing our Shops. The event is being supported by The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, Energy Savings Trust, The Open University and Quantum Coaching who will also be running master classes.

WHSmith suppliers are providing product training for store teams in the larger stores on the features and benefits of their products to increase staff product knowledge.
There will be lunchtime learning voice conferences with internal experts for all store management teams, covering areas such as Driving Profitability in Store and Being a Successful Manager.

There is a dedicated intranet site, which is accessible for all employees, featuring different learning resources each day, including blogs about people’s roles around the business and learning handouts.

CSC Computer Sciences Ltd is running Learning at Work Day at its offices in the UK and around the globe. UK locations include Chesterfield, Aldershot, Solihull, Chorley and Preston. Global locations include Beijing and Shanghai in China; Bangalore, Mumbai and Indore in India; Virginia in the US; as well as offices in Malaysia, Japan, Singapore and Australia.

Special activities that have been organised by the Campaign for Learning for the day, including a challenge to create a learning film, and the website learningatworkday.com has lots of activity ideas for companies that can be staged quickly and with low cost.

Is your organisation taking part in Learning at Work Day? Post a comment below.