Rural Lifestyle Options Australia - Issue 13

PEOPLE CONFERENCE MELBOURNE 2020

The NFP People Conference is Australia’s biggest event focused on how to attract, train and retain the best people for the NFP sector. It’s designed for managers and team leaders, HR professionals and volunteer managers, board members and senior leaders working at Australian NFP organisations.

The conference focused on six themes:

1. Managing people well 2. Leadership 3. People and organisational strategy 4. Strengthening HR 5. Recruitment 6. Health and wellbeing

Melinda and Fiona attended different concurrent sessions across the two days with speakers including:

• Kon Karapanagiotidis, CEO & Founder of Asylum Seekers Resource Centre. • Craig Davis, Co-Founder, Sendle. • Shereena-Lee van de Berkt, Head of Domestic HR, Medecines Sans Frontieres. • Annette Young, Head of People & Culture, The Smith Family. • Cassandra Hatton, General Manager Human Resources, St Vincent de Paul Society. • Ramon Wenzel, Research Assistant Professor, Learning for Purpose, Centre for Social Impact.

Fiona Gazzard

Melinda Jones

Executive Leader People and Culture

People and Culture Coordinator

I found the two days to be incredibly inspiring, with so many being open to sharing their experiences and journeys. I particularly enjoyed the Design Thinking for HR Leaders Workshop, this workshop highlighted the importance of ‘knowing’ your team and then tailoring reward, recognition and feedback to the individual. We started by pairing up with other workshop participants and interviewing each other with specific questions. The purpose of the interview was to really listen to what the other person was saying to identify their values and preferences, and only speaking yourself to clarify something they had said. We then designed an award for that person based on what we had learned about them. Kon Karapanagiotidis’ closing message was very moving and demonstrated the positive impact that can be made by an engaged and empowering leader. This session left me feeling very blessed to be working with leaders within RLOA who are equally as engaged and empowering.

As a HR professional I took away some very valuable information. On day one, when listening to Cassandra Hutton from St Vincent de Paul Society she talked about creating powerful moments to engage and mobilise our people. Her advice was to really make that connection with employees and drive trust and values. When joining the Recruitment session with Kylie Flament from Green Connect she discussed how an organisation can overcome barriers to employ diverse candidates. On the last part of day one, Christina Ryan from Disability Leadership Institute talked about recruiting for a culture and inclusion. On day two I went to a Health and Wellbeing session with Kathryn McEwen talking about being resilient and leading resilient team cultures. Having that flexibility in the workplace and offering shorter working arrangements to get better values out of your employees. For the last session of the conference I went to a recruitment session with Olivia Passmore at Ethical Jobs and she talked about job ads, connection and making sure your first impression counts.

26 Rural Lifestyle Options Australia Magazine

Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker