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 We'd like to say a big thank you to everyone, all 200+ of you, who came along to the "Working Smarter, Not Harder" event that we co-hosted with Microsoft on Tuesday 1st April 2008. The evening was really well attended with the last few people arriving having to sit on the floor (!) and judging by the feedback received, the event was a great success and everyone enjoyed the night.
After a welcome and update from Maggie Berry, womenintechnology's Director, our key note speaker was Dr Suzanne Doyle-Morris who talked about what makes successful people work smarter and not harder in order to achieve a work life balance that is unique and completely right for them. I think everyone was able to take away action points from her top three recommendations - identify your key strengths, delegate and set your boundaries. If you would like a copy of Suzanne's successful career strategies document, please email her directly: suzanne@doylemorris.com
We also heard from Microsoft's Trisha Watson, Public Sector Group Marketing Manager and Nickie Smith, Online Service Group Business Marketing Manager. Trisha talked about how her job share works successfully and Nickie shared her own top tips for balancing your life and your work.
After the presentations, there was an interactive Q&A with the evening's speakers as well as Fleur Bothwick, a Trustee of Working Families and Kevin Cavanaugh, Senior HR Manager at Microsoft. As always there were too many questions to be answered in the 30-minute slot but the panellists shared their top tips on working smarter, not harder which included:
block out free time in your calendar
decide what's urgent and important
put yourself first
manage your emails, don't let them manage you
work free from distractions (research shows it can take 15 minutes to get back into a piece of work after a distraction)
The evening ended with a lively informal networking session over drinks and sandwiches where the discussions continued about working smarter and people shared their own experiences with each other. There was the opportunity to chat to members of the Microsoft recruitment team and if you would like to find out more about roles at Microsoft you can contact the UK recruitment team via this email - ukjobs@microsoft.com
So final thank you's go to Dr Susanne Doyle-Morris, Trisha Watson and Nickie Smith for presenting, to Fleur Bothwick and Kevin Cavanaugh for participating in the Q&A and a big thank you goes to Microsoft for sponsoring the event and being such good hosts. | 