Lockdown can’t diminish the Learning at Work Week Impact Awards

The Open University Business School is a proud supporter of Learning at Work Week, the biggest festival of workplace learning in the UK. This support is part of Executive Education’s partnership with Campaign for Learning, a national not-for-profit organisation that promotes lifelong learning.

The Learning at Work Week annual awareness campaign has taken place every May since 1999. This last year was no exception despite the obvious disruption to our working and everyday lives with the 2020 Impact Awards celebrating bold, creative and excellent events which promoted and supported lifelong learning at work.

Entrants were judged on how their Learning at Work Week campaigns were designed to achieve a range of outcomes. The 2020 awards invited entrants to show how they promoted a lifelong learning culture, inspired learning journeys and digital learning, innovated in learning and development, and supported business and organisational goals.

In 2020, organisations relied upon the engagement of their workforces to survive and thrive. The pandemic, mass shift to working from home, or working while observing social distance and thereby the health and well-being of the workforce, has put people (rightly) at the forefront of business strategy. The way we work now, the things we value and the way we want to live in the future has changed us in some ways, irrevocably.

This year’s entrants all stressed the need to engage, the need to cater for dispersed people in diverse circumstances with a view to bringing their organisations together through learning. At the OU Business School, we have always strived to make learning accessible and flexible and to encourage lifelong learning.

This year’s winners demonstrated alignment with these values. Congratulations to Severn Trent and NOCN Group who won our ‘Supporting Business & Organisational Goals’ Impact Awards in the Large Organisation and SME categories, respectively.

Liz Moody
Director of Executive Education, OUBS