Job Swap: Risk, Resilience & Development
Elaine McKechnie is the Commercial Director at Oxford Innovation, whilst Gareth Scargill is the Business Development Director.
According to Elaine, Oxford Innovation provides the following:
“We run a range of spaces and environments for start-up and growing companies, providing the support they need in a collaborative and vibrant community. The buildings are owned by ambitious organisations that want to transform a place; whether it is to deliver economic growth, regenerate a town centre, facilitate wider research & innovation or encourage co-creation between a sector-based community.”
There are currently 26 Innovation Centres across the UK. There are @1,000 organisations across the 26 Centres.
Elaine and Gareth explain more about why they have both entered into a job swap which had its origins in the military. The pandemic underlined the business needed to be more resilient and reduce the risks of events such as the pandemic. “We wanted to be able to support and cover each other as well as challenge each other.”
Gareth added. “We wanted to develop our teams to provide a better pipeline of talent for the future. We also wanted to avoid ‘knowledge voids’ which occur when people leave the business, sometimes unexpectedly.”
The role changes are described as ‘formal secondments’ and are encompassed in a one page document with those colleagues that want to take part. It really is very straightforward.
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