NWEEG Conference 2016 inspires employee engagement

The North West Employee Engagement Group (NWEEG) held its second ever conference on Thursday May 19 at Partington’s Newton Hall Holiday Park in Blackpool to more than 160 business delegates from across the region.

The Group, founded by Scancapture, encourages HR leaders to meet one another, share best practice and learn more about how better staff engagement can lead to increases in retention and productivity.

Steve Smith, managing director of Scancapture and founder of NWEEG, said: “The aim of the group is to make the North West the best place to work in the world, and through NWEEG, we are on a mission to change the perceptions of the region.

“The event is all about employee engagement, skills, learning and development and the idea of the group is to learn from others and share experiences.

“We had presentations from people who are out there doing the job; it’s not about experts or gurus giving advice on what people should be doing.

“We want to promote awareness about employee engagement and what it can do, showcase real life practical experiences and proven evidence that it works, so that everyone can take it back to their business and try it out.

“From our data, we have worked out that if we engage people by just 2.5 per cent more, on average it will increase your bottom line by four per cent.

“To put that in to context, if you take all of the 95 businesses that were there on the day, they employ 321,000 people, turn over £13.5bn, and if we engaged them all 2.5 per cent more, that would be put £525m extra in the pot. So this is serious stuff we are talking about.”

Andrea Challis, managing director of the Partington’s Group, said: “We were absolutely thrilled to host the NWEEG Conference 2016.

“Employee engagement is something very close to my heart as it has completely transformed my own working life and our business as a whole.”

The event saw a number of topical seminars and workshops delivered by the NWEEG team with talks from Andrew Henderson and Sara Wilson of Lanway Corporate Systems, Simon Brierley of 2BR and Wayne Clark from the Global Growth Institue.

Other speakers included Jamie Thompson of MTA Learning, Sandra Green of Handbags in the Boardroom and Norry Ascroft of L&D professional.

There was also an evening programme on offer which included a chippy tea, a pub quiz hosted by Crown Paints, professional singer Helen Louise and a DJ and disco until late. Supporting the event were ambassadors acdc, Scancapture, Crown Paints, Lanway, LH Recruitment, Napthens Solicitors, Organisational Healthcare and Sofology, with Lancashire Business View as media partner.