Blog posts

This week we published two blog posts:

Sharing, learning and growing user-centred design at CDPS - Our Head of User-centred Design, Jo Goodwin, gives an update on the progress we have made so far, and what’s next…

How to keep staff happy and retain them at your organisation - There are steps that you can take as an employer to make sure staff are happy and stay at your organisation, says Lauren Power, our Talent Partner

Events: Comms Cymru

https://twitter.com/Gemma_CDPS/status/1623638356956512259

This week Gemma attended Comms Cymru, the Welsh Government network event for those working in comms within Welsh public services. It was the first time the meeting had been held in person for 3 years and the room was a buzz of enthusiasm.

The agenda of the day focused on lessons learned with various themed topics including communicating a pandemic, communicating in a cost of living crisis and the Welsh language in Welsh Government. CDPS’ Head of User-centred Design, Jo Goodwin, gave a presentation on the barriers people face when accessing support services which I live-tweeted.

The keynote speech from Alex Aiken (Executive Director for UK Government  Communication) was particularly inspirational. He was down to earth, open and honest and gave 10 things he had learned over the past 10 years.

The main takeaways included:

He also presented a question he had typed into ChatGPT. As communicators, the artificial intelligence software has ruffled some feathers amongst the profession with some worrying it will make our role redundant. Alex’s advice was that it won’t do that but comms pros need to be aware of its potential as a tool. Dan Slee recently wrote a useful blog post on what AI means for PR and comms.

I’m looking forward to the next meet up. It was really lovely to see people in real life, some of whom I’d only ever really met over email or Teams.

How to retain staff webinar

On Thursday, CDPS hosted the last in the Attract, Recruit, Retain webinar series. This webinar focused on retaining digital, data and technology talent in Wales. We were joined by Lauren Power, who provided insight on CDPS’ approach to retention. Alun Lee from Welsh Revenue Authority and Tara Rhoseyn from Sport Wales shared how their organisations retained talent and how they have developed digital apprenticeship roles to create new career pathways. There were 18 attendees from across 5 organisations.

If you missed it, you can watch the recording on our YouTube or catch up on our Twitter thread.

As part of the series, we have published resources and blog posts, aimed to help those working in the Welsh public sector find out more about how to attract, recruit and retain DDaT talent.