On Tuesday 7 November 2023, Progress Staff Conference was held in-person at The Coton Centre, Comberford Road, Tamworth. Even though it was a staff conference, it also served as a team building and re-networking opportunity. It also provided a direct medium to provide updates on the requests made during last year’s conference.
Presentations made highlighted progress made at Progress since the last gathering and provided insights on the next chapter. The event ended on a high note with the presentation of awards.
Claire Rogers, Managing Director, said the goal of the event was to align all of Progress workforce with the organisation’s vision, making the entire team to understand the organisation’s current stage and what it is looking to achieve, while also reflecting back on, and celebrating the successes.
“When you’re in the day-to-day of this work, you don’t think about that stuff and it’s so important to step back and to reflect. So really it was about what did we say we were going to do, what have we actually achieved. And then what the focus is going forward,” Claire said. “And what we wanted to do was just remind people, one, of what our vision is, what their part is within that and how they can bring that to life everyday. And make sure that we’re doing the things that matter to our staff. Because retention is really important to stability for young people because ultimately if we’ve got a stable staff, we’ve got a strong well trained workforce, we’re going to deliver better outcomes and ultimately that’s what we’re here for. So I think we’ve we’ve we’ve achieved that. Everyone’s been really engaged and it’s been a great day.”
Phil Mcdonald, Head of Adult Services, added that it’s nice to come together annually to celebrate people’s achievements, to see where the services have been, to see what things the services have faced, to listen to feedback from staff and from the people using the services and to set out what the organisation wants to achieve in the coming year.
“So looking at that, looking at where we want to go, for us it’s more of the same in terms of helping people to get to, to meet their goals, in terms of reaching adulthood, finding their own homes and working with colleagues and children’s to prepare them for their journey through that.”
Tina Bhardwaj, Head of Children’s Services described the big take out from the day as the workshops and the learning.
“Listening to people contribute, listening to people’s passion, their skills, what they’re learning and their journeys and and taking away something that’s important to them, that they’re going to go back and change, practise and learn and develop and how they’re going to use their learning to change the way that they practise,” Tina said.
Angeline Freer, Head of Corporate and Commercial Services expressed her satisfaction regarding how the day went including the introduction of Nous, a new benefit for staff.
“It’s an amazing time to see achievements of people and to see my team members. It’s really a nice chance to have everybody together. It’s really good to be able to reflect together as a whole organisation and look at what’s important, and what we need to focus on – key achievements, challenges, et cetera. So yeah, it’s fabulous.”
