Flourishing business is the business of OD

The CIPD Organisational Development Conference, London, 24 September, 2009

HR professionals will soon have the chance to learn from their peers how to best unleash an organisationís potential. The CIPDís Organisational Development conference spotlights how businesses, from local government to small firms and listed companies, can boost turnover, improve staff retention levels and increase morale using Organisational Development (OD).

The event will bring together HR personnel from all sectors and sizes to explain what OD is and how it can improve the organisations they work for. It will demystify this complex discipline and explain how it can work for different types of organisations and what it can mean for business performance.

ìThe real challenge for companies today is becoming flexible enough to withstand tough and often unpredictable market conditions, whilst keeping a longer-term focus. The pace of change is so fast, itís crucial to develop and maintain the capabilities that enable sustainable organisational performance,î says Ed Griffin, conference chair.

He continues: ìOD is at the heart of this and is even more important in these difficult conditions, when short term actions may have longer term negative implications. It should be a central component of business strategy. At this conference weíll hear from those who have hugely benefited from OD and how they got there, as well as the latest research and thinking from the experts.î

Speakers include:

David Stephenson, group head of OD, Royal Mail
Jamie Sims, Head of People Management, Cumbria County Council
Valerie Garrow, associate director HR research and consultancy, Institute for Employment Studies
John Holland, internal OD consultant, Hewlett Packard
Martin Saville , OD consultant, Martin Saville Consulting and former director of strategic planning and operations, London Business School
Jo Hennessy, director of research and Liz Finney, senior researcher, Roffey Park
Sharon Varney, director, Space for Learning