Conversation — notes (Feat Mark Turner)
My week notes this week will feature a conversation with Mark Turner, Project Manger for our Dorset Workplace project. Sam McLaren and I are trying to inspire others in our team to write their own week notes and as he inspired me I want to inspire others. Taking time to think and reflect on the week can be great for the sole, useful for others to learn from and a mechanism to look back over time to help us grow.
Water cooler moments
Delia:
Working in the office this week allowed me to have some adhoc conversations with team members, ICT, members of the leadership team and caretakers. I really enjoyed being able to talk face to face with so many people. I learnt that many people in our organisation are struggling to use the new hybrid meeting equipment and don’t know that they need to lift the camera lens cap. I also learnt how working in the office is helping so many with their well being. Mark what water cooler moments have you experienced this week?
Mark:
For me I am a very social person and I always enjoy bumping into colleagues and seeing how they are doing and what they are working on which stimulates my own thoughts. One of the nicest moments was when someone who I worked with on a project who had never met me in person came and said hello and had a chat with me. And we reflected back on the piece of work we did when the pandemic first took hold.
Meetings
Delia:
I had a variety of meetings this week including 2 hybrid meetings where I joined others working remotely using the new teams equipment in our meeting rooms. As we only had a small hybrid meeting room booked for our team meeting and we were asked to complete tasks together I reworked the breakout groups so that those of us in the meeting room could work as one group. Having us all in separate groups wouldn't have worked due to the close proximity we were in, plus by using the meeting room we wanted to maximise our in person presence together.
Mark I noticed you had a lot of meetings this week, do you think we are having too many meetings now?
Mark:
Yes I do. As a Project Manager I naturally need to hold a larger number of meetings than some other roles. But I always try to think these through in advance and only meet with people when I have too and when I don’t have a clear focus I would rather postpone or cancel the meeting than bringing people together without reason. I think our current culture is a big organisational challenge we need to face and work through so we can maximise productivity and truly embrace a hybrid approach. Watch this space as I am keen to really help drive an organisational conversation on this and what would be considered best practice over the next few months. As a starting point anyone looking to consider their approach to meetings should check out what we said in our Digital Champions webinar on ‘Holding hybrid meetings using Teams equipment’. (This is available on Yammer for Dorset Council employees)
Dorset Workplace
Delia:
As part of our Dorset Workplace project which has been formed to work with colleagues to provide new ways of working Mark and I delivered a training session to our Dorset Workplace Digital Champions all around Hybrid working. We had some great feedback from the session including:
‘Very useful training session — I am now confident to set up a meeting on the new bookings system and hold a hybrid meeting using the new equipment’
From my water cooler moment earlier in the week I was able to emphasise to champions to remind their colleagues about lifting the lens cap of the camera.
Mark did you get any ideas from the champions at the session on areas where we could improve our ways of working further?
Mark:
Yes I did. We all have a stake in Dorset Workplace so I always enjoy sharing what we are doing with colleagues and listening to their feedback. One of the crucial bits of feedback that came back to me was around the interpretation of the Dorset Workplace Framework. In the creation of the Framework we were keen to create overarching guidance that teams/services can interpret around their individual business needs. But in some instances there is evidence some of the guidance isn’t quite correctly filtering down. So I need to get the project team to think how can we best support these areas in these instances to make sure they are making best use of the flexibility now on offer. I also am keen for as many people as possible to come to our Employee Forum Engagement sessions that we will be offering in the near future.
Hope you enjoyed this joint week note. Thanks for helping and fuelling the conversation this week Mark.
Bye for now.
