Go1's Lexi Partell shares her highlights and insights from BridgeCon Europe 2019

Go1's UK Customer Success Management team recently attended BridgeCon Europe 2019, held in London on the 20th of November.

BridgeCon brought together 300+ HR professionals from across Europe to discuss employee development, design thinking, high-impact learning, and talent and leadership development. Here, Lexi Partell, Customer Success Manager, shares her highlights and insights from the event.

Hosted by Instructure and Bridge, the BridgeCon 2019 conference focused on engagement in L&D and employee development, with a wide range of speakers and panellists who are at the top of their fields. 

The opening note to the conference set the scene for the day with some impactful statistics centred around employee retainment and the relationship with training.

Of those who responded to a recent Bridge survey, 50% didn’t believe that their company supported L&D unless they as learners, specifically provided the tools. A further 98% said that L&D would heavily impact their desire to continue working with a company. It opened up an interesting conversation around a company centric vs an employee centric learning model for the rest of the day.

A panel led by Kimo Kippen featuring Kate Matthews from Citi, Catherine Allen from Ella’s Kitchen, Wim Focquet from DPD Group and Marie Helson from Hello Fresh approached the topic “Creating Effective Employee Development Environments.”

The panellists spoke about their focal points for 2020 being employee retention, how to collaborate successfully as a global business and growth in an uncertain market. Employee retention was a familiar theme that emerged in regards to change management and fostering a psychologically safe environment. 

With the average workforce now consisting of 5 generations, discussions also centred around how HR/L&D can enable their workforce to share knowledge and develop their staff, ensuring this speaks to all generations.

After hearing from two panels, it became apparent that whomever owned the learning space needed to walk the walk and own the mistakes that happen. Coincidentally, the learning experience extends to actually implementing the type of environment that fosters L&D.

As the HR and L&D landscape continues to change and the demands from the workforce become more concentrated around learning on the job, it is obvious that the pivot from traditional learning has happened. For those that are left behind, they will be in danger of potentially losing a good workforce. 

I think the main question that was left hanging for all of us was - whose responsibility is L&D? Is it the executive team, line managers, HR or L&D; or is it, in fact, the collaborative workforce itself?

Each company will be different but it seems that learning centric organisations such as Amazon and Google are both leading the field in their market and are also attracting and retaining top talent, enabling them to grow themselves and others, while remaining at the top of their game.

Go1's Lexi Partell and James Frappell at BridgeCon 2019.

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