Workshops

Many organisations use workshops, seminars and conferences within the organisational change process, as instanced above. A workshop is a planned and facilitated event, usually involving between eight and twenty people, and lasting from two hours to a full day. Conferences are larger events, usually involving between 50 and 200 participants.

Workshops and conferences can be used to:

Impart information
Gather information
Deepen understanding
Persuade
Make decisions
Solve problems.

Workshops and conferences can be used to address a wide range of issues in the workplace:

Explaining organisational changes such as new structures
Seeking to build support for these changes
Getting ideas and information from a wide spectrum of staff and managers to help develop organisational strategies
Securing commitment to a plan or course of action, e.g. a new sales strategy for a sales team
Obtaining ideas and information from particular occupational groups as part of a training needs analysis
Informing people about a change of ownership of the organisation
Explaining and promoting early retirement and voluntary redundancy schemes
Gathering data from a cross-section of an organisation as part of an organisational review
Assessing the potential of a new product or service
Evaluating the success of a new product or service
Having an in-depth discussion about a particular issue or problem with a view to solving it
Improving communications to and from employees
Reviewing the development of a team or group

The facilitator usually has several roles:

To help design the event so that the organisers’ objectives may be achieved
To manage the event, including discussions and any problems that might arise on the day.
To present findings if there has been research conducted that needs to be validated and discussed
To produce written reports.
Where there are a significant number of events to be organised we contract in specialist event
managers to organise and administer these.