Worldspan Group

Archive for February, 2010

Cancer Research Appeal

Breast cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK and almost 46,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. Sadly more and more people are being affected from the consequences of the disease either directly, or indirectly, through people they know and love.

The good news is that the number of women dying from breast cancer has fallen to less than 12,000 for the first time in almost 40 years.

Thanks to improved detection and better treatments, more people are beating breast cancer than ever before and now 8 out of 10 breast cancer patients survive beyond five years.


Read more

Employee Engagement vs Employee Compliance

Employee engagement is about appealing to the hearts, minds and hands of your staff and gaining their heartfelt commitment to the cause. Commonly, however, organisations can only gain an employee’s compliance which involves just the hands.

There are 4 common key factors in interacting with your employees that will help in creating that desired level of commitment*:

Clarity - every employee must clearly understand what the goal is and they can articulate it to others

Relevance - every employee can see the relevance of the goal to business success

Meaning - they can see the personal meaning of the goal - what does it mean to them and how does it resonate with their personal values

Involvement - most importantly, they have the choice to be involved in shaping and implementing the goal either directly or through another.

*(Belgard-Fisher-Rayner)

Top 10 tips for running Successful Employee Workshops

  1. Create  an appealing environment - a light, airy comfortable venue and appropriate table & chair layout
  2. Offer the opportunity for groups to mingle before, during and after to assist in natural ice-breaking
  3. Offer refreshments throughout to ensure the mind and body is ‘on the job’ and concentration levels are high
  4. Provide plenty of breaks to cater for natural attention spans and allow time to absorb and reflect
  5. Use a range of stimulating media to structure the learning process
  6. Create workshop materials with a laser-like focus on the objective you are trying to achieve
  7. Train the presenters and facilitators beforehand and ensure their skills, techniques and knowledge are up to speed to maximise the workshop
  8. Capture the output and use that intelligence in future communications strategies - close the loop and don’t let the feedback get lost
  9. Keep to time and keep the agenda moving
  10. Provide plenty of opportunity to feedback during and after - verbally and/or in writing