News story: Supporting innovation at work

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We told you how we’re transforming Companies House. To engage our staff and get them involved, we held an Innovation Day to give them the opportunity to take part in lots of interesting and innovative activities. There was a wide range of creative sessions to get us thinking in new ways and encourage better communication and working together.

There were ‘hands on’ activities, like interactive puzzle exhibits from Techniquest and the Escape Room challenge. We invited staff to attend talks by colleagues to learn more about their hobbies and creative skills. There were also opportunities to attend one-on-one coaching sessions, learn more about ‘agile working’ and watch TED talks introduced by colleagues.

We had 4 keynote seminars from guest speakers. These covered subjects such as creating an innovation culture, how to be happy at work, being creative and taking risks.

 Denise Hampson, Desire Code

Denise is a consultant behavioural economist and service designer. During her talk, she told us how human psychology can help us design great experiences, and how we can use this when we design our services.

 Steve Dimmock, doopoll

Steve has started a few companies, so he shared his experience about the highs and lows of running a business. His funny and engaging talk looked at how to start and run a business, and how to deal with problems when things do not run as well as they should.

 Warren Fauvel, Nudjed

Warren spoke about how we can all be more creative, feel better about taking risks, and how to learn from failure. He showed us some useful tools for creativity and innovation in his interactive and entertaining session.

 Marie Edwards, Academi Wales

Marie’s interactive session showed us how to use tools and techniques to apply the principles of positive psychology at work. She told us how practical, daily activities could increase your own happiness, satisfaction and success, and how this positively affects other people.

Companies House Innovation Day 2018

Our Innovation Day let staff try something new and find out how they could work in innovative ways. It was a great way of encouraging a collaborative, creative and supportive work environment.