Fit for the future: how organisations can survive and flourish

Friday 29th September, 09.00 – 16.00 |
Advanced Research Centre (ARC), University of Glasgow

Productivity Matters is Productivity Club Scotland’s annual conference that brings together organisations from Scotland’s private, public and third sectors to learn new strategies that can help your organisation boost productivity and increase your resilience.

This free to attend hybrid event is delivered in partnership with The Productivity Institute – Scotland Forum with the support of the University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Business School.
Official Charity Partner of the event is Finding your Feet.

Click HERE to see the programme.

Agenda
 

Why Productivity Matters

  • The free to attend conference is the only event in Scotland that solely focuses on the performance and productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
  • We give every organisation in Scotland the opportunity to share their experiences and learn from each other
  • Through peer learning from some of Scotland’s most successful businesses the event aims to address shared issues and highlight potential solutions

Speakers

Attendees will hear real-life examples of business resilience from a wide range of businesses, academics, and experts. There will also be great networking opportunities and the chance to learn from their peers through shared experiences.

Official Charity Partner

Productivity Matters 2023 official charity partner is Finding your Feet.

Finding Your Feet help families affected by amputation or limb absence with activities, services and support to benefit fitness, mental health and personal growth. We believe that forming relationships with peers and being part of a group is one of the most powerful ways to reduce isolation, which has been proven to be a contributing factor to life expectancy in the amputee community.

Our goal as a charity is to be on hand with some form of support or opportunity for every amputee in Scotland. The first step towards doing this is to connect people and make them smile, which we’re pretty good at. Ours is a community where people can give and receive support in equal measure, and some just join in to make a few pals. Whether an amputee needs vital counselling or wants to sail the seven seas, FYF is the place to be.

We provide a voice to our community that champions inclusivity and diversity in society. We believe that being different should be celebrated, not sidelined.

Donate by clicking HERE.

Productivity Club is an ideal place to learn, share and grow in confidence with a group of likeminded people who are interested in improving their business. It tackles topics that are “now” with real time, practical learning

 

X
Theresa Shearer is an internationally recognised and influential leader in the development of human rights-driven public services. Theresa is CEO of Enable; Vice President of Inclusion Europe; an alumna of the University of Strathclyde and Harvard Business School; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and served as a Commissioner of both the Law Family Commission on Civil Society and the IoD Shinkwin Commission on “The Future of Business: Harnessing diverse talent for success”. At Enable, she leads 2,500 staff, supporting 13,000 people to live, work and participate as active and respected citizens in the communities of their choice.
X
Lindsay Keegans is Senior Vice President of Sales at Ooni Pizza Ovens. In 2017, after business development and project management positions in the more corporate environments of KPMG and Cigna, Lindsay took a leap into the world of pizza ovens. Since then, she’s been on an incredible growth journey helping take Ooni from a start-up to one of the top outdoor cooking brands in the world. Ooni was listed as Scotland’s fastest growing business in the 2022 Sunday Times Fast Track and number 7 in the UK.
X
Jillian Gordon is Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Her current research interests examine emerging entrepreneurial ventures and ecosystems, digital entrepreneurship trends and wealth recycling. She is particularly interested in how the practice and logics of entrepreneurship translate across social contexts. Her research has been published in leading international journals, including the Harvard Business Review, and FT ranked journals including Journal of Business Ethics and Human Relations. During her career she has successfully secured several competitive research funding awards from major funders, including the ESRC, EPSRC, Horizon 2020 and the EU EIT Scheme.
X
In her long and varied career at BT Dr Nicola Millard has done many jobs, including futurology, research, usability, customer service, marketing, and business consulting. She was involved with some BT firsts, including the first application of AI into BT’s call centres, BT’s initial experiments with home working, and helping to develop BT’s “net easy” score, a new way of measuring customer experience. Nicola got her PhD from Lancaster University in 2005 and has authored over 50 publications. She is an award-winning presenter, with 2
X
Lynn Houmdi is passionate about making work work. She helps people access meaningful, fulfilling work that fits with the commitments and enjoyment of life. She does this through Making Work Work – for Women Returners, the award-winning women returners programme she designed and delivers with The Challenges Group, and also through her Facebook community, Flexible Working Scotland. Making Work Work has supported almost 200 women across Scotland. Flexible Working Scotland is an community of 9.6k people seeking to work flexibly and advocate for greater flexibility and equality in the workplace. Lynn was named Scotland’s Flex Influencer 2022 at Scotland’s Flexible Working Awards 2022.
X
Alastair comes from a farming background and studied agriculture at West of Scotland Agricultural College. Having cut his teeth selling Scotch Beef and Lamb, he returned to the family business in the mid-eighties to help establish Arran Dairies where he is now Managing Director. He is also Managing Director of Taste of Arran Ltd. Arran Dairies Ltd is a manufacturing dairy business that also has a wholesaling division which wholesales all catering supplies to hospitality and catering businesses based on the Isle of Arran. Manufactured products include premium dairy ice cream which is sold throughout the UK by Alastair’s other business, Taste of Arran.
X
A passionate advocate of the importance of SMEs in the economy, Barry has expertise in a range of finance and economic issues. In his role as Senior Manager at the British Business Bank, Barry is the eyes and ears of the Bank in Scotland and is focussed on supporting SMEs to transform the Scottish economy. Prior to joining the Bank last year, Barry spent over a decade working in senior public policy and public affairs roles in Scotland – from leading FSB’s policy work and managing key relationships, through to advising think tanks and co-founding an employability start-up.
X
Alexander is an experienced Diversity & Inclusion leader, having worked across Public and Private sectors in the space for over 7 years. He is most passionate about bringing an intersectional lens, as a queer man with ADHD, to strategies and policies. He has led on projects such as AdvanceHE’s Developing an Anti-Racist Curriculum, Deloitte’s Neurodiversity and LGBTQIA+ initiatives, and is Head of Corporate Membership Services at Neurodiversity in Business. His roots trace back to the student movement, where he led on the Cross-Party Parliamentary Group for Racial Equality, Scottish/UK Higher Education sectors and was VP Education of his Students’ Union.
X
Martin Avila is CEO of the CEIS Group, the UK’s oldest and largest social enterprise support agency. With a background in community asset and landownership, Martin has almost 20 years leadership in the Social Enterprise sector. He was previously Treasurer of Community Land Scotland, Chair of the Loesje International Foundation and Treasurer of the Alliance of European Voluntary Service Organisations. Previous roles include Director of Xchange Scotland and the Kinning Park Complex. He sits on the North Ayrshire Community Wealth Building Expert Panel, The Community Wealth Building Bill Steering Group, NSET Business Support Review Steering Group and the Steering Group for Scotland’s Social Enterprise Action Plan.
X
Matthew is a consultant anaesthetist in NHS Scotland, founder and CEO of Infix Support. Infix was founded in 2019, driven by my frustrations with the poor healthcare software available. We have design and user focus at the heart of our approach, and drive efficiency of operating theatres to a level that will drive down the surgical backlogs. We have gained significant traction within NHS Scotland in the last 3 years, which is unrivalled to most companies of our size.
X
Professor John Tsoukalas is the Deputy Head of the Adam Smith Business School and the Academic Lead for the Productivity Institute in Scotland. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland, USA. International expert in applied macroeconomics with emphasis in the empirical measurement of productivity shocks and the role of expectations formation in the economy and financial markets. Served at the Bank of England in the Monetary Analysis division for 3 years–tasked with developing the suite of investment and inventory models for the Monetary Policy Committee, and the development of small-scale models to complement the main Bank forecasting model. He has held visiting positions in the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Johns Hopkins University.
X
Dr Cor Hutton MBE was given a 5% chance of survival in 2013. She lived, but doctors were forced to amputate both of her hands and legs. Since then, Cor has founded an award-winning charity for amputees, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and became the first Scot to receive a double hand transplant. Her work has changed the lives of families with limb loss, and this story of adversity – delivered with as much humour as pain – has inspired audiences throughout the UK to become more resilient and provided the tools to deal with trauma.

 

Productivity Club lets everyone in the room to share their own thoughts and experiences and build connections to help next steps easier. I learned as much as I passed on!