February 2023

The participants of the Skills Acceleration Programme improved their communication skills with an intensive workshop on Effective Communication.

Breathing well, controlling nervousness, listening actively, not repeating small words, looking into the eyes, controlling the “pulse” of the moment, smiling, nodding, being aware of non-verbal language, intonation, and so on. …. All this and much more was worked on by the workshop participants, who spent 4 intensive hours with Luis Ortega, an expert in communication and negotiation techniques.

Making good use of communication, knowing how to communicate and transmit correctly, is one of the skills most in demand in companies today. Its use is not only in the professional area, where it is clear that providing adequate communication is a skill that can make a big difference and increase the chances of success in any situation, especially when exercising leadership functions, but also in the personal sphere, effective communication is vital as it helps to understand the other person’s point of view and make our own clearly understood, has a favourable impact on personal self-esteem and has a decisive influence on how we make others feel.

The workshop, sponsored by the multinational company Alight Solutions, took place on Wednesday 23 February, from 16.00 to 20:00 h, in seminar E04 of the Faculty of Business.

CLCs are groups created by and for employees, a safe space for exchanging opinions, supporting specific minorities and creating networking opportunities.

Alberto Aragón, co-director of the Incubator, participated in the meeting organised in Woodlands – Texas by Alight’s Diversity and Inclusion team, last February 17th at 16:00 Spanish time (9:00 AM in Texas time). This meeting included numerous activities and was attended by over 70 Alight employees during the 16th and 17th of February, both in person and online.

This global meeting aimed to reflect the importance of improving the wellbeing of the company’s employees, enhancing and encouraging internal communication strategies, fostering diverse recruitment, developing employee retention policies and evolving strong communities, etc. In this context, the importance of strategic partnerships (such as Alight-Univerty of Granada UGR) was also highlighted.

Colleague Led Communities’ objectives chart

Therefore, the intervention of Professor Aragón, the only European partner who participated in the meeting, was to give visibility to the activities carried out by the UGR Talent Incubator and the close collaboration between the two entities, showing how the Incubator provides top level talent to the Granada office, the main service provider centre in Europe for Alight. Alberto Aragón gave an overview of the existing talent programmes, the action of mentors and professional coaches in tTherefore, the intervention of Professor Aragón, the only European partner at the meeting, was focus on the activities carried out by the UGR Talent Incubator and the collaboration between the UGR and Alight.  He showed how the Incubator provides top level talent to the Granada office, the main service provider centre in Europe for Alight. He gave an overview of the existing talent programmes, the role of mentors and professional coaches in these programmes and explained specific initiatives such as the Supernova Programme (aimed at encouraging vocations at a variety of academic levels, from STEM studies to high school girls), Talento Mujer (a training program aimed at offering advice, training, and professional experience to university students in order to help them develop their careers in the future), Talento Mujer (a training program designed to provide university students with advice, instruction, and professional experience to help them advance their careers in the future. It also aims to provide instruction, professional experience, and advice to university students to help them launch a successful career in digital companies) or the new Inclusive Alumni Lab programme (a project for promoting lifelong learning for young students with learning diversity and high potential, helping them to learn the use of digital tools demanded by firms).

This participation was supported by Raquel Pedregal, inclusion and diversity specialist at Alight, and former alumni of the Incubator. She presented her own personal experience and how this experience has helped her to successfully carry out her current role in the company.

Lola Vidal, co-director of the Talent Incubator, offered a seminar on Leadership at Alight for employees and managers interested in strengthening this ability.

Is a leader born or made? An innate or developed competence? This was the starting point of the workshop and the question with which the meeting ended. A seminar aimed at debating and reflecting on self-knowledge, the power of our identity beliefs, their origin, the ability to change them and the cause of our results.

60 participants attended this event, which lasted more than two hours at the company’s headquarters in Granada and which generated a high level of interest and a second part of this training action that will take place on the 9th of March.

Alight is promoting this type of seminars aimed at developing and promoting positive and quality leadership based on values that allow the organisation to improve its competitive capacity with internal leaders who are examples, models of action, of a culture of collaboration that is developed through their own behaviour.

The activities of the Poli-lingua Project continued with a workshop on the use of the Escape Room as a methodology to develop soft skills.

The workshop was held on 3 February at the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies, and will be given by Alejandro Ortiz Pérez, professor of business organisation at the University of Granada and expert in human resources.

The aim of the scheduled activity was to work on the development of the soft skills of the students participating in the Programme and to improve their ability to face the new forms of selection that are being adopted by the most cutting-edge companies in human resources management. In this workshop, students will learn through the use of the “Escape Room” methodology (an adaptation of a game that consists of a group of players solving enigmas and puzzles of all kinds, in order to unravel a story and finish it before the end of the time available). During the activity, the students saw how to work on different skills such as teamwork, leadership, communication, organisation and time management, among others, which are fundamental for any job and professional sector.

This workshop closed the seminar training part of the “Poli-lingua” programme students and gives way to the beginning of six months of training internships in the company Alight Solutions, which sponsors the whole of this programme for high ability students