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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

New seminary of the Poli-lingua Programme for highly linguistic learners focuses on the vital issue of change management.

Everything is changing all the time. Economic, social and technological changes are happening every day at a speed unimaginable a few years ago. These changes will significantly affect the jobs and the qualifications and skills expected of workers in the future. The new economy is demanding new professions and skills to develop in a working environment of constant transitions, disruptions and changes in strategy.

The new, increasingly digital economy requires learners to develop new types of skills that enable them to thrive in an increasingly automated and information-intensive environment. The workers of the future, in addition to the knowledge needed to handle technology, will require other skills that are more diffuse and difficult to identify.

For all these reasons, the Talent Incubator organised this seminar for reflection and analysis on the skills that students need to develop in order to adapt, in an agile and flexible way, to the digital economy. The seminar, sponsored by the multinational Alight, took place on 20 January at the Faculty of Business Studies and was given by Gema Campos, executive and team coach and specialist in human resources management.

The new edition of the Poli-lingua Programme to promote Linguistic Talent in our University has started.

The Programme was inaugurated on Friday 13 January in the Salón de Grados of the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts with the presence of Simon Suárez Cuadros, Vice-Dean of International Relations of the Faculty, Heidi Bassa, Senior Operations Manager Nordics of Alight Solutions and Lola Vidal, Co-Director of the Talent Incubator.

After the inauguration, the first workshop of the Personal Development Programme took place under the title “Wake up: it’s your attitude that counts”. With this workshop, the 12 participants of the programme begin to work on personal development and leadership, creating an opportunity for learning, growth and self-improvement through self-knowledge. The aim of this activity is to offer useful tools to the participants to enhance their capabilities and develop their potential, acquiring and developing their own leadership model that allows them to make conscious decisions, to know their strengths and what they want to achieve in their professional careers and in their personal lives.

The workshop is part of the activities that the Talent Incubator develops through the sponsorship of the company Alight Solutions to support young university students with high potential.

The participants of the 6th Edition of the Professional Skills Acceleration Program visited the “School of Solidarity” Foundation to launch a Social Collaboration Initiative with this NGO.

The 20 students of the Program visited this Foundation whose purpose is to recover the family sense of people living in social exclusion. During the visit, they were welcomed by the founder of the organization, Ignacio Pereda, who showed them the facilities and explained that the School of Solidarity is based on the concept of a universal family where people live in community and where anyone is accepted regardless of their creed, ideas, religion or conviction.

The Foundation welcomes people living in uprootedness, social disadvantage, mistreatment or exclusion: mothers with children in emergency situations, young immigrants, adults and adolescents at risk. The Foundation currently has 20 open houses, 180 people and more than 30 children and its funding is based on contributions from members and the Food Bank.

In this context, students participate in a high performance team development activity whose purpose is to help the Foundation in any of its basic needs. The aim of the activity is for participants to improve their service leadership skills, increase their level of commitment to the Program, achieve a deep and integrated learning of teamwork skills, be able to boost performance at both individual and group level through self-knowledge and increase their employability by facing situations completely different from their normal activity, developing their ability to adapt to the environment and to change.

The activity was very well received by the participants and will end in March with an exhibition of the results.

The conference “Research Career, beyond the dossier”, held on 14 December, was attended by 145 people interested in knowing in depth what are the grants currently available in Europe to access funding to develop a research career.

The conference was organised by the International Projects Office of the University of Granada in collaboration with the Talent Incubator, and it presented numerous current grant programmes through which interested parties can currently find funds to be able to devote themselves professionally to research.

At the end of the period established for the development of the “GOOGLE CLOUD DIGITAL LEADER” Training Programme, organised by Google and the University’s Talent Incubator during the month of November, 100% of the students enrolled have completed the programme with grades above 8 out of 10 in the four courses included in the Programme.

Considering the online nature of the courses and the fact that many of the students who have taken the courses had no previous knowledge of “digital cloud environments”, we consider the programme to have been a complete success of which we are very proud. The combination of quality materials, the provision of highly committed students and the support provided throughout the programme have been key to achieving such a favourable result.

These data confirm the University’s policy, shared with the multinational Google, which has actively collaborated, on the need to continue reinforcing the complementary offer of digitalisation programmes for students of all university degrees.

The programme was a pilot experience aimed at students who had little training in this area and its objective was to improve the employability of university students by enhancing their digital skills. We hope to continue to run this type of digital training projects in the future.

Congratulations to all participants!