London 2012 blog

It's a very busy time for us in the Olympic Delivery Authority's Human Resources team, as we are still doing lots of organisational set-up work, including reviewing our HR policies and recruiting staff.

Because of this, I don't seem to get much opportunity at the moment to get out and about to meet people outside of the ODA and our partner organisations. This week was therefore a bit of a treat for me in that I went to two separate external events.

My first foray was to do a presentation to about 50 HR people at an event on leadership and talent management. My talk was about how we have approached setting up the ODA, our achievements to date and challenges for the future, and how HR supports the business.

When you talk to people about how exciting our London 2012 vision is, the challenges we face and how we are tackling them, they seem really interested, and also very positive about the 2012 Games and their legacy.

My second trip out was to an evening called 'Dining with a Difference' held at the Brit Oval, where I was a guest of one of our HR suppliers.

The whole idea of this evening was to get employers together with organisations such as the Employers' Forum on Disability to generate discussion and galvanise some action around the theme of 'accessing talent from an untapped source'.

The Minister for Disabled People, Anne McGuire, gave an interesting speech on the Government's agenda around these issues.

The evening was fun, but very thought provoking. I will definitely be talking to ODA colleagues about what we can do to take some of the ideas forward in future.