Last week a handful of swans attended the hugely successful Culture Shock event at the Enteprise Centre, University of East Anglia. The event was organised by Fountain Partnership who teamed up with the UEA and aimed to address cultural issues in the workplace from equal pay to agile working.
Throughout the evening the extremely talented Rebecca Osborne captured the discussions within a live illustration. If you haven’t seen her work before you should definitely go and check her out. We love her alternative and creative approach – she even managed to incorporate our ‘happiness first‘ value into her drawing.
The evening kick started the evening with a spot of networking and some tasty nibbles from Brick Pizza and Namaste India, washed down with some delicious beverages provided by Adnams.
Rebecca Lewis Smith, Co Founder and Managing Director at Fountain, delivered an excellent keynote speech on ‘Naming Your Monkey’s: Company Culture When it Matters Most’ – which despite the name didn’t involve pet monkey’s, but was in fact an insight into a time when not everything was smooth sailing within her business and some of the challenges they had to overcome.
The agenda was jam packed full of interesting speakers, including our very own James Groves who took to the stage with Ali Clabburn, CEO at Liftshare, to discuss ways of building culture.
Chris Sargisson, CEO at the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce chaired a panel discussion on “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace” which sparked some interesting conversations and questions afterwards.
The evening concluded with a thought provoking conversation between Laura McGillivray, Chief Executive at Norwich City Council and Glen Webster, Area Business Manager at Barclays bank, looking at change management and culture shift from a larger organisations view point.
All in all it was a great evening on company culture and well done to everyone who was involved in organising. Particular thanks to all the speakers for sharing their thoughts and experiences on an array of topics – we thoroughly enjoyed it!
If you would like to watch James’s discussion with Ali Clabburn, from Liftshare, on ‘Building Culture’ you can watch it below.
