Development

Knowledge. Skills. Experience.

Engaging development experiences for employees at all levels.

Our programmes bring together the concepts, skills and evidence that contribute to improved wellbeing, productivity and interpersonal effectiveness at work. Choose from our existing flagship programmes, or create a bespoke programme. Either way, your employees will benefit from a challenging and supportive learning environment and impactful skills they can practice from day one.

Why work with us?

Our team has created and delivered development programmes for graduates, managers and organisational leaders, across a range of key themes and sectors.

  • Our experience across sectors, industries, geographies, organisational contexts and levels of seniority means we can translate key concepts for virtually any audience or environment.
  • Our evidence-based approach means we use methods and concepts that work – we avoid fads, fashions and out-of-date ideas about people at work.
  • Our flexible and pragmatic approach means a good experience for everyone – we want to create development experiences that challenge and delight.
  • We play nice with others! We can make relevant contributions to your existing programmes and partner with your other expert suppliers and internal talent professionals.
  • We can work at any scale – from one-off team development sessions through to continent-spanning leadership programmes.

Our approach to people development

When it comes to creating development experiences for your employees, we know it can be daunting to entrust such a key activity to an external partner. We work closely with our clients, to ensure we create a fit for purpose experience.

We adopt a personalised approach, to develop a solution which reflects your specific needs, timeline and budget. We place an emphasis on giving your employees skills and knowledge which they can start putting into practice immediately.

We create development solutions that minimise disruption to day-to-day activities, maximise asynchronous learning and reflection and emphasise practical implementation – so people start to notice the difference immediately.

Structured development programmes

We have a range of pre-designed development programmes, each covering one of our core themes: productivity, wellbeing and effectiveness at work. We can also deliver tailored versions of these programmes, or create entirely bespoke development experiences for your employees.

Our development programmes typically run between 3 and 18 months and frequently include one-to-one coaching. Programmes include a selection of relevant modules, each of which can be run on multiple occasions to keep cohort sizes small and interaction high. Workshops can be run virtually, face-to-face or a combination of the two. We can host the entire programme on our dedicated learning platform, enabling delegates to access it from a device of their choosing, at a time that works best for them. 

When it comes to choosing a programme for your employees, you can:

  • Pick one of our existing structured development programmes, the details of which are below.
  • Create a modular programme, based on a combination of our existing ‘Bite-sized Learning’ modules. 
  • Invest in a truly bespoke programme, with newly-crafted content, based on a needs analysis. 

Whatever the option, we will of course reflect your ethos, your aims and your organisational context.

The delegate experience

Each delegate experiences the following stages as they go through each module on the programme:

Insights: In preparing for each module, delegates access our online learning system, review preparatory materials, and are posed questions about the new concepts, their relevance to the workplace and what their impact could be.

Interaction: During workshops – whether in-person or online – delegates get the chance to discuss these ideas and skills, practice the skills and engage in live conversation with colleagues.

Implementation: After the workshop, delegates can begin to practice their new skills and note how it feels to experiment with new ways of doing things.

Inquiry: Using ‘office hours’ sessions with one of our team, delegates can get clarity on any aspect of the module and get feedback on how they’re bringing it to life at work.

Incorporation: Ongoing reflection allows delegates to build their insights and skills into their existing portfolio of skills and make them part of their ongoing way of working.

Our development programmes

Our three flagship development programmes are each 12-months in duration and focus on one of our key topics: wellbeing, productivity and interpersonal effectiveness. Each programme brings together online resources, interactive and engaging workshops, and space to reflect and implement new skills and perspectives.

Focus

Our flagship Productivity programme.

Delegates will learn how to make sense of their workload, distinguishing tasks from projects, assigning priorities, avoiding procrastination and building their focus. The ethos is one of ‘sustainable’ productivity. Not frantic working to get ‘everything’ done. This combination of skills and concepts brings a clarity, focus and intentionality to work, illustrating that productivity doesn’t have to come at the cost of wellbeing.

Thrive

Our flagship Wellbeing programme.

Delegates will learn how to build healthy habits that contribute to better sleep, more movement, less stress, more resilience and more effective coping with the inevitable challenges life throws at us. By the end of this programme, delegates will have a significantly increased awareness of how to invest in their own wellbeing and make the changes that contribute to a healthy and sustainable approach to work.

“WorkLifePsych have supported our graduate development programme for over nine years. Their team provide a mix of workshops across the programme, and coach each of our graduates.

We have found that our graduates really benefit from the objective support provided by WorkLifePsych coaching psychologists. This enables them to successfully navigate challenges like adapting to new work environments, dealing with workload, managing stakeholder relationships and remaining productive while working remotely. Coaching also helps them maintain a focus on their development and the acquisition of the key skills and personal qualities that our business values.

We have had consistently positive feedback on the contribution WorkLifePsych makes to our graduates’ experience and would not hesitate to recommend them”

Alison FahyDCC plc

Inspire

Our flagship Effectiveness programme.

Delegates will learn how to communicate, collaborate and work more effectively with others, learning more about themselves, their thoughts and emotions along the way. We enable delegates to boost their emotional intelligence, have better conversations, and proactively invest in their working relationships.

Team Development

The phrase ‘team development’ can bring back unpleasant memories of uncomfortable ‘trust-building’ exercises, over-sharing of personal information and inappropriately-chosen outdoor pursuits. We take a very different approach.

We design and run workshops to improve team awareness, cohesion and performance.

When we work with a team, we have the following goals in mind:

  • Building individual and collective self-awareness
  • Building interpersonal trust and collective psychological safety
  • Identifying what works and what needs to change
  • Getting commitment for action and setting out next steps

Regardless of the topic at hand, it’s key that team members feel they’re working with someone professional and experienced and you can be sure that our facilitators have years of experience working with teams across industries and continents.

Our workshops don’t involve running building rafts or running around muddy fields – although that can be fun! Instead we design workshops that focus on working style, interpersonal support and learning more about each other. They are definitely fun, and nobody gets wet!

“We asked Richard to design and run a team development away day, in preparation for an upcoming organisational change. Richard spent time getting to know and understand our requirements, interviewed key senior team members and demonstrated an empathy for our organisational context.

He designed a workshop that ensured everyone contributed, allowed for open and challenging debate and helped us focus on the actionable changes we’d like to make as a team.

We found the session to be extremely valuable and I would be very happy to recommend Richard to any organisation looking for a professionally facilitated team workshop.”

Robin McIverKings College London

Common scenarios where we work with teams:

  • Bringing together the members of a newly-formed team
  • Preparing a team for organisational change
  • Gathering a team together after restructure and change
  • Building trust and psychological safety
  • Support in dealing with pressure and workload
  • Improving team efficiency and productivity