Going 100% Hybrid - Case Study 1 - Renewables Industry Body.
Scottish Renewables (SR) is the trade association that enables all of the companies and industry that are in the renewables industries, to collaborate, to form agreements and to respond to government policy.
They commissioned us at PlacesWork Ltd to design and deliver a live training course that would build the skillsets and confidence across their team to Chair the many types of industry meetings that they convene.
The result was ‘1 week after you trained us, we have been putting it all into practice, and the feedback that we got from members was that it was the best hybrid meeting they have ever been involved in. The people who were remote said they felt really involved. It was a great experience for them. The people who were in the room said the same. Which was all on the basis of what you taught us the week before. “ - Morag Watson, Director of Policy, Scottish Renewables September 2022
This blog tells the story of this piece of capacity building because it has many lessons for other businesses.
Our live course from 3 angles with Scottish Renewables leaders
Why go 100% hybrid as a Renewables Industry?
Scottish Renewables (SR) is a infrastructure organization. SR serves huge industry in an area of the growing economy that is thriving and moving at a rapid pace. As Morag explains ‘“Scottish Renewables represents 300 companies spread across Scotland, UK and Europe. We have members who we are sitting everywhere from Lerwick through to Milan and we're trying to represent them equally. Therefore for us to be able to bring people together, both in person, and online on an equitable basis is really, really important to delivering for our members on a meaningful basis.
To have yourself come in and teach us good practice, and how we can do this effectively has been a huge benefit.”
The membership of SR is made up of different types of sub industries that produce renewable energy. There are the big names of industry like Scottish Power or SSE, but there are also a myriad of companies with different specialisms. Renewables includes; hydrogen, offshore wind, onshore wind, hydro, ground source and more. Which actually is a much more complex mix than the oil and coal fuelled energy industry. Therefore Scottish Renewables has very skilled staff in each specialism area, and also in the business of liaising and influencing and working with policy agendas at a UK and Scottish government level, as well as international.
You couldn't imagine a more important industry at this time, as we go through the current energy crisis trying to create a more sustainable planet. Bringing the sector together so that it can be relied upon to inform and influence government and regulators policies, or so that the supply route issues and technical advancements become joined up are crucial functions of all the types of meetings that SR convenes.
Chairing sets the tone, across Renewables Industry.
Scottish Renewables has beautiful offices in the city centre of Glasgow. Pre pandemic this was a key place where people would turn up to take part in policy developments. Meeting each other and working together are the ways that companies form bonds that enable the industry to flourish.
Pre pandemic this meant a very central belt weighting of Scotland. During the pandemic SR swivelled, being able to work together with its 300 members online, which had significant advantages to the geographically remote companies. Yet the opportunity to build bonds post-pandemic across industry was one of the reasons why SR approached PlacesWork Ltd to train its core staff in Chairing. The need to build the synergies across the industry members, given the rising energy crisis is palpable to senior leadership of Scottish Renewables.
How to Chair the variety of industry meetings to achieve these experiential outcomes as well as the functional outcomes is actually very complex.
With the advent of hybrid meetings it means companies can have the best of both worlds. S.R. can invite members to either be in the meeting physically in Glasgow (or at other hubs in the future) or save travel and time and stay where they are working that day.
Strategically, post pandemic, Scottish Renewables is deploying a range of options, including parliamentary receptions, conferences, online only briefings and hybrid meetings.
Being able to confidently offer the best of both options – hybrid meetings – is the logical answer for Renewables Industry
We developed a 2 part course called How To Chair Complex Environments. This was delivered as a live course (alongside everyone getting access to our online course to refresh their learning anytime in their own time). Of course we delivered as a hybrid course, with one of us facilitating with some of their staff in their Glasgow offices, using their tech, and with another PlacesWork Associate and other SR staff joining remotely.
The course included:
How power, authority and influencing works,
How Chairing works before and after meetings
Etiquette in hybrid meetings
Techniques to aid consensual decision making,
Strategies to facilitate discussion on both sides.
Tactics to enable professional practice to develop at rapid speed within hybrid environments.
And, of course the practical tips about audio and visual, having more than one screen angle more than one video angle.
This depicts the meetings of the present and future. Pod Based Meetings I call them.
This meant that we were demonstrating the equipment, layouts, break out rooms and facilitation techniques, using the settings that they needed to become comfortable leading.
The impact of Live training courses - a case study
Each time we do a live bespoke version of our training courses, we see and hear about the confidence and skills that have helped different professions become more adept in running their meetings in the hybrid format. Already in 2022, this been true with staff from as wide a range of settings from W.W.F., National Education Board for Scotland, Carnegie U.K., Sustrans, Pilotlight, Scottish Prison Services and Edinburgh Care4Carers.
With Scottish Renewables it was a pleasure to hear from their Director of Policy just a week later the following testimonial. “To have yourself come in and teach us good practice, and how we can do this effectively has been a huge benefit. 1 week after you trained us, we have been putting it all into practice, and the feedback that we got from members was that it was the best hybrid meeting they have ever been involved in. The people who were remote said they felt really involved. It was a great experience for them. The people who were in the room said the same. Which was all on the basis of what you taught us the week before.“ Morag Watson, Director of Policy, Scottish Renewables September 2022
If your company would like us to do an internal live training course with some of the crucial leaders in your industry then get in touch to discuss.
Going 100% Hybrid across a range of settings.
We can run a LIVE training course for example. Often these are 2x half days of training, one week apart and we ask each person to try to attend one part in person at the offices, so you can see the practicalities of best practice.
Our LIVE regular Hybrid Meetings courses happen regularly at the EVOC building in Edinburgh (and online obviously!)
This LIVE training attracts a cross spectrum of types of organisations. Participants work together in many activities designed helping re-plan and problem solve each others meetings which makes the course fascinating to learn and look at a diversity of types of meetings. Which means that participants come out of the training feeling confident about going 100% hybrid in a range of scenarios and settings.
As one recent participant said “Our organisation is still at the very beginning of our hybrid journey and the course was very useful indeed. The course was delivered very well and professionally.”
Going 100% Hybrid - as an industry body
Scottish Renewables said that the course transformed the way that they Chair their meetings. They know that this is a hybrid future for them and their industry. They also know that in the future, as they go forward, it will be a strategic choice about whether to be 100% online, whether to be hybrid, or whether sometimes to also call face to face only meetings.
Policy Development for sustaining 100% Hybrid culture.
S.R. are developing a policy for their organisation about when to run hybrid, when to run face to face and when to run online only. We have been hearing this need increasingly from different staff groups. Staff need senior management to now write down policy guidance about which types of meetings they expect to be run hybrid and which ones in the other two formats. The policies need to set out the reasoning, the benefits and criteria for each type, so that staff can be clear about what the new normal is like.