Pauline Morgan, HR Officer
RPC Containers Ltd, Oakham
I’ve been involved in the Social Club at RPC for more than 10 years. I’m the Secretary. The Social Club committee arranges regular trips, tours, events for all age groups and an annual Family Fun day for the whole company, which employees, friends and family are welcome to come along to.
The Social Club heard about the benefits of Informal Learning through one of the network groups that our HR Manager attends. We arranged a meeting with Workbase to find out more. They advised us on how to set up an informal learning programme within RPC. Workbase also put us in touch with other companies so we could find out how informal learning worked in their organisation.
We decided to merge informal learning plans with our already successful Social Club and rename it the “Social and Give it a Go Club”. It was really important to us that the club was run by the employees, for the employees so one of the first things we did was a survey to find out what people wanted. This has been really helpful in planning events. It also showed everyone that we could be flexible and run courses at times that worked best for them, covering the things they are interested in.
For our first event we held pamper sessions at a local beauticians. Employees, their friends and family were invited to have a manicure or pedicure plus received a free goodie bag. The event was very well supported and enjoyed by all those who went along. Since then we have held drop in sessions with the occupational nurse. Improving health and wellbeing in the workplace is something people are really interested in and it was good to remind everyone the nurse is available.
Our next event is called “Essential First Aid Course for all ages”. The event is free with a buffet afterwards to allow people to network and discuss the session. Again friends and family are welcome to come along too and people have been quick to put their names down to attend.
In the future we hope to put on an event based around self-defence and crime prevention. We are also looking at offering language CD’s which employees could borrow to learn a second language.
It’s been interesting that people who have not previously come along to Social Club events have got involved with the Give it a Go sessions. People have commented that this was not something they would normally do, but they had a great time and interacted with work colleagues from different areas.
Informal learning has given RPC employees from different areas of the business the chance to interact outside of the workplace and to try new activities. People are learning new skills that will help them in everyday life as well as at work. In the future we plan to hold at least four informal learning events a year. Informal learning is a great way of helping employees learn new skills, interact with colleagues and hopefully enjoy themselves at the same time.