Today was another day of back-to-back meetings and workshops. I worked on managing our team’s bibliography and our cyber security project.

We had our weekly team meeting, which usually goes for an hour and a half. As part of that, I delivered some learning and development training for the team on how to use bibliographic software to build up our research library. Each month, a different member of the team summarises three journal articles or academic reports and summarises it in a way that that makes sense for the type of work that we do in social policy.

We are importing those into a software called Mendeley that will help us manage and build up our library of resources for the future. We also had our branch meeting, where we heard back the results from our recent culture survey and we had discussions around how executives can better meet our aspirations and goals.

In the afternoon, I facilitated with my colleague an one and a half hour workshop with a team that is looking to use behavioural insights to test some of the training that they deliver and also to improve cybersecurity outcomes.

This is one of three cyber security projects that we’re currently running

Today this is the fourth in a series of workshops which are about capability-building. We are teaching them how to use behavioural insights principles and methods as part of the way that they evaluate their work. Today we were focusing on narrowing in on a behaviour that they can test using their existing I.T. [information technology] infrastructure software and data collection systems. It went really well.

Afterwards, we had a debrief meeting to plan ahead. We reflect back on the outcomes of the capability building workshop and what we still need them to do to prepare for the next time.

They’re going to have to answer some questions about the data and systems that they have, so they can flesh out how are they going to start to plan their own randomised controlled trial using behavioural insights.

I had about an hour to just catch up on my work. Emailing stakeholders, and writing up notes, and testing other bits and pieces that I am juggling.

Mondays through to Wednesdays are very busy for our team. I’m very glad to have made it to the end of this hectic day.