In November, we attended the 11th National Family Business Conference, with this year’s topic focussing on disruptive technology and innovation within our fields.

With presentations delivered by keynote speakers from Bardsley England, Active Digital. HR Go, Synectic Solutions, Arora Group and Kinetic Consulting, topics a wide variety of topics from succession planning, to mental health in the workplace and sustainability to disruptive thinking and the benefits that this can have on our effectiveness and efficiency.

Given the focus that there has been over the last year on mental and physical wellbeing within the workplace, it was incredibly useful to hear from other family businesses as to what they have put in place to support their workforce and consider how these can be adopted within our own company. And hearing the statistic that more than one worker within the construction industry takes their own life each day, it really hit home how important our wellbeing policies and the approaches that we take with our team really are. As a result of this, we’ve taken the decision to review our wellbeing policies in consultation with our team to make sure that we are doing everything we can to support them, ensuring that we aren’t contributing to the statistic. We’ll also be looking at publishing these policies on our website in the future so that our clients can see the approaches that we adopt to support our workforce.

In addition to the important topic of mental and physical wellbeing, innovation featured as a big focus with a fantastic presentation from Bardsley England; a family-owned and run farming business who are at the forefront of their industry technologically speaking, who are investing in research to enable them to better understand trends in fruit and plant growth to improve their crop production. Additionally, we took part in a round-table discussion with speakers from a range of different family business to discuss the challenges we face when looking at implementing new technological advances within our businesses, something that we consider carefully due to the nature of the historic processes we use on a day to day basis within our project sites.

With a day focussed on innovation, the conference gave us a real opportunity to reflect on our current practices and explore how we could improve our processes using technology or considering how we can improve our environmental impact within the construction and decoration industry.

And then there was the Haka…

Did you know that the New Zealand All Blacks introduced a new version of their famous Haka in 2005, having used the ‘Ka Mate’ haka up until this point. The ‘Kapa O Pango’ reimagined the wording of the original haka, moving from ‘I’ language towards a more team focussed ‘we’. Created in consultation with many experts in Maori culture, the Kapa o Pango was created to compliment the Ka Mate, rather than replace it and was much more specific to the rugby team referring to the ‘warriors in black and silver fern’.

This transition served as an introduction into an interactive discussion around teamwork and how clearly defining your objectives and purpose as a team can enhance the shared team vision and in turn, improve performance through clearly defined roles and understanding how each impact on one another. Of course, this presentation wouldn’t have been anything without 150 members of family businesses performing the famous facial expressions from the haka as a means of breaking down barriers and sharing a sense of unity – a great lesson and great fun too!

We’d like to thank the team at the Family Business Place for putting on such a great event and can’t wait to attend the next one! And if you’re a family business and are interested in how the Family Business Place might be able to assist you, take a look at their website: https://www.familybusinessplace.com/