The Standards programme is designed as a journey of improvement leading towards accreditation for Planning, Insight and Quality teams and functions. Whether you are at the start of your journey, wanting to understand the fundamentals of best practice, or an established team wanting to become best-in-class this programme is you.

With a seemingly unstoppable tide of support for some homeworking, what makes a new operating model fit for the future? How do we avoid floating on a sea of outdated working practices or policies?

Who will be rushing back into the office and what choices will people be offered? Is this a global shift in our work lives? What is driving decision making?

Our National Conference focusses on our individual communities of Leadership, Planning, Insight and Quality providing a community focus to develop topics, discuss challenges, share ideas and learn from fellow professionals. The last face-to-face Forum event was in November 2019 in Manchester. The pandemic gave us an opportunity to do something different and experiment with virtual events which have proved extremely popular. With the opportunity to hold face-to-face events now opening up, it gives us another opportunity to experiment. 

The question now is: How do we combine the best of virtual and face-to-face?

We got everyone up and running at home in days, despite coming from a standing start. This is how it happened and what we learned that can help us going forwards.