CIPD annual conference experience

Last month my employer, Actavis Limited, provided me with the opportunity to attend the annual human resource development (HRD) conference, organised by the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD) in Olympia, London. This is the first CIPD conference I attended.

The annual CIPD conference is organised around a number of seminars and the first task for anyone attending is to choose those they wish to attend. This is not so easy, considering that many seminars focus on very interesting, appealing subjects.

Participants were greeted in a very professional manner on entering the Olympia Conference Centre and the conference organisation was excellent in all respects, with sufficient handbooks and information about all the speakers.

I attended 11 seminars in all: two relating to performance improvement; four on line managers; and five on organisational development and leadership. All the speakers delivered inspiring presentations highlighting the various HR practices used within the organisations they work for, and referring to various theories that were implemented at the workplace. On most occasions a book related to the seminar would be offered for sale after the presentation.

The first thing that impressed me at this conference was that during the seminars reference was made to organisations that were by far much larger than what we are used to locally, with some having 60,000 or 80,000 employees. The size of these organisations enabled the various HR practitioners to implement and test a variety of HR practices within the same organisation.

Secondly, all speakers delivered powerful, professionally prepared presentations. The ones that struck me most were 'An interview with Lady Marie Stubbs: Transformational Leadership' and 'An interview with Sir Bob Geldof: Achieving your goals'.

The interviews made it amply clear that when the passion for work or a particular cause is inbuilt, anything is possible. By just listening to them one can understand how they managed to get to where they are and achieve what they have achieved. It really follows the saying that, once you believe in it, you can achieve it.

I would definitely recommend HR practitioners to attend this annual conference or any other similar conference. During these three days I could focus my attention on the best HR practices, tested through trial and error, as experienced by other organisations.

In addition to attending seminars, the conference provides the opportunity to view certain company stands exhibiting their various training methods and programmes.

I hope that this article will encourage other employers to emulate Actavis Ltd and make similar opportunities available to their employees. I thank the FHRD for providing me with the relative documentation before the conference and for the well organised travel arrangement. Finally, I look forward to Sir Bob Geldof's visit to Malta next month!

Ms Pace works in the Human Resource Department of Actavis Limited, Malta.