Highlights from Manor Royal BID People Conference 2024
The Manor Royal BID People Conference 2024 took place at Crawley College. Speakers were Steve Sawyer, executive director at Manor Royal BID, Anthony Fitton, Head of consulting at Bailey & French, Paul Rolfe, associate principal, employers & stakeholders, Chichester College Group, and Dean Wynter, deputy principal, Crawley College
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00:00 [CROWD NOISE]
00:13 Thank you for coming to the first people conference of 2024.
00:19 We are talking about skills of the future with some really fantastic insights
00:25 from our expert speakers who I'll introduce as we go along. Looking at technology, human dimension
00:32 and finding out a little bit later on from Paul and Dean about the amazing things that the college
00:37 are doing to support manual companies, companies generally, but also how they're developing
00:43 world-class skills right here in Crawley.
00:46 This is our mission in our business plan. This is what we set out to try to do to make sure
00:53 that manual is widely regarded as a place where companies and people choose to be.
00:58 The strength of its community and the quality of the trading and working environment.
01:03 And I've picked out here the things that I think really resonate with me in the work that I do.
01:10 It's about people, it's about community, it's about us working together to make manual a better place.
01:17 We couldn't do that if we didn't have that sense of cohesion between ourselves.
01:21 The last bit I want to talk to you about is developments on manual oil.
01:25 You all know that we are on a massive mission since 2013 to transform manual oil in terms of
01:31 better facilities, park areas, recreational space, changing the infrastructure.
01:38 We're putting in place with our partners, the Borough Council, the County Council, new bus lanes,
01:46 changing junctions, crossing points, entranceways. And this is the picture that we're building.
01:53 We started with one park and one entranceway and we're building out to this.
01:59 You've all had your coffee and if you thought that you were going to be able to just sit there and
02:03 have some insights grown in you and maybe you'll absorb some of it,
02:06 I want you to turn to the person next to you if that's okay.
02:12 Preferably if you come with a colleague, maybe turn the other way and
02:15 speak to someone you don't know. Scary stuff.
02:19 The thing that I want you to talk about, just very briefly for 15 seconds or so,
02:27 not very long at all, I just want you to tell them something that's very unique about you.
02:33 What I want to talk about today is my perspective as a business psychologist,
02:38 working in the last 10 years or so in organisations like yours,
02:41 DWP, HSBC, Mercedes, it's great to see some of you in that world as well.
02:47 It's great to see some of you, I've worked all over the world in some organisations that I'm
02:53 truly privileged to have worked alongside. But I want to be talking about my perspective.
02:58 One thing that I'm really conscious of standing up here, talking about AI and being an expert in AI.
03:06 How many of you have seen that on LinkedIn recently? We kind of laugh about that over coffee.
03:10 How many AI experts have you seen crop up? But what I do talk about with those organisations is
03:17 future skills. And okay, if technology is emerging, there will always be an emerging technology and AI
03:23 is just one of those at the moment. But how do we keep this? How do we keep our unique human
03:31 strengths? And I want to use a little tester here. Because for me, I think it comes down to three
03:38 things. How can we create value? How can we create trust and safety? And how can we create followership?
03:47 Because if we don't have those three things, and we don't leverage technology to deliver those three
03:53 things with human centredness, if that's even a word, at the core of it, then you don't have even
04:00 an organisation. Who's been to see Abba Voyage? Yeah, good. What did you think?
04:06 Was it better than what you expected? Did it feel real?
04:12 So there's some blurred lines here, right? Because when I talk about human experience,
04:18 please don't get me wrong, I think technology will potentially be able to replicate or at least
04:23 help people to create a more human felt experience. Are you dancing just the same as if Abba were on
04:30 stage? Did they look real? At any point did you look around and go, "This is a bit weird"?
04:36 No, right? Of course you didn't, because the people behind the scenes there, and this is where
04:42 your organisation's come into this, the skills that you need to equip people with are the skills
04:48 that help people to design experiences like that. Whoever you are and the organisation that you're
04:53 a part of, let's not lose this in our organisations, and let's leverage technology to create that human
04:59 experience, and leaders will be leading from the front, role modelling, but actually this is down
05:06 to the fabric and the culture and the DNA of an organisation. Space Dean and I are stood at the
05:13 moment is our BT5G immersive space, and this has been a partnership between the College and British
05:21 Telecom, these fantastic spaces, and Dean has been leading the development of this. So we've got
05:28 three, Dean, of these spaces, so two of them are kind of this shape, and we have a fully immersive
05:36 one in the car park as well. I think the tech means that people can have temperature differences
05:43 realised and... We have all the technology that Anthony was talking about. We are using these
05:49 spaces for augmented reality, so we can have, we've got 500 ambulance apprentices at this
05:56 college, and we can put them in environments that they can't go into until they hit it in the road,
06:01 and sometimes, you know, we have to talk them through what goes on. We can have them performing
06:05 arts, doing presentations here, we can put them on stage in London, we can create any environment
06:10 in a safe way. The relationship we have with the man of oil predates me, and it's a proud relationship
06:18 with providing our man of oil training programme, led by Kath, who's over there somewhere. Kath's
06:26 been working on a number of new programmes that we want to propose, including one of the world's
06:32 first AI accredited programme for end users. Where this has come about is that the government
06:39 are really trying to drive higher technical qualifications in STEM-based subjects. On the
06:46 train, I was reading the government's strategy for IOTs, their draft strategy, and it said in that
06:51 paper that in the UK we lag significantly behind other countries on higher technical STEM skills.
06:59 The Towns Fund is a big - Corley Borough Council's a big part of the deal up, and we were lucky
07:06 enough in part of that overall bid that's in developments and infrastructure, and I know
07:09 there's been developments, or going to be developments on man of oil, was split into
07:14 different pots. So some of that money has gone into the IOT, so part of the construction and
07:19 part of the kit money that we were talking about to enable us to buy that top-end kit
07:24 has gone there. We've also got projects to interact with some of the larger construction
07:29 sites in the area to actually take the student experience to those sites and have a full
07:35 experience in terms of working with employers. But part I'm really excited about is the development
07:42 of the curriculum. Now, you know, we were all talking about how long things have gone on. This
07:46 is my 41st year of an association with this college. I was an apprentice in Corley all those
07:52 years ago. This is my 22nd year at the college, and I've been really lucky because I work on that
07:58 development of teaching learning, which is the most exciting part of, you know, everything that
08:02 happens at the college. So the Green Village - so what we had is we had four streams, basically.
08:07 We needed to look at the environment and how we educate the people. We needed to look at our
08:11 business curriculum, our digital curriculum, and our green skills curriculum. So the Green
08:17 Village, which hopefully, you know, if you get a chance, please go and visit, is about an
08:22 environmental experience for everybody in this community. So are you supportive of the manual
08:28 bid? That's what we do. Don't feel embarrassed about saying no. If you don't feel supportive
08:32 of the manual bid or you have questions or you're not sure, we're very open to that kind of
08:39 feedback. So are we focused on the right things? So it kind of relates to what we were saying before
08:43 about us wanting to respond to the needs that you have and the ideas that you have for improving
08:48 Manor World, a place where you do business and employ people. This is really key for us because,
08:55 again, we use this data combined with other data that we've got, as well as research that we do
09:00 with engineers or architects to try to evidence to local authorities, those we want to influence.
09:07 We use this kind of data to talk to them and say, "Look, we're speaking on behalf of the manual
09:11 companies. This is what they're telling us. This is why we're designing these kinds of projects.
09:16 This is why we want to have this kind of conversation with you about these kinds of
09:19 things." But it also influences how we might spend the bid levy. That's the contribution that you make.