The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 40: Dec/Jan 2018/19 | Page 34

BUSINESS NEWS Diver & former RAF squadron leader shares knowledge at leading UK diving conference UNIQUE BUSINESS MEETING VENUE: THE HEAD SHED HR expert Pippa Richardson is celebrating the completion of her unique business venue which she has spent months renovating just yards from her own farmhouse in the village of Whitley, near Melksham. The Head Shed is just 15 minutes from Junction 17, so within easy reach of local businesses and was until a year ago a dilapidated farm shed. Pippa said: “Having facilitated hundreds of meetings as an HR Director operating within FTSE 250 companies, I know what makes the perfect venue. I saw a lack of choice in Wiltshire and this motivated me to create a venue of high calibre in my own ‘back yard’ so to speak. “The importance of finding the right venue for business meetings, workshops or courses, is an often forgotten and underestimated factor in ensuring successful meetings.” Pippa has transformed the farm shed, which probably housed cows, into a venue which is far removed from a corporate meeting room or bland hotel conference room. She said: “I’ve designed The Head Shed to provide the perfect space for meeting participants, for teams and individuals to find clarity of thought, to focus, get energised, get creative, make great plans and importantly, make better business decisions, faster.” Five years ago, Pippa gave up her fast-paced and high-pressured corporate HR career to run her own independent consultancy. “I wanted to choose the projects I wanted to work on and help the people I knew I would enjoy working with,” said Pippa. This change coincided with Pippa and her husband Peter purchasing Lagard Farm in Whitley. Pippa immediately saw the potential of the disused outbuilding as a business meeting venue and would help 34 THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2018 her create her own work/life balance. Paula Power, independent trainer accredited by Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, has already tried out The Head Shed. She said: “It’s a fantastic venue. The unique environment Pippa has created is conducive to great meetings, great ideas, great innovations and great working relationships. I will certainly be using it again.” The Head Shed is equipped with all the necessary business tools, offers WiFi and business broadband, with parking for up to ten cars with additional parking nearby. Additionally, The Bothy, located just beside The Head Shed, can provide furnished self-catering accommodation (limited to two persons) for visiting C-level executives, or clients delivering training sessions. The Head Shed is available from £157 a day for up to 12 delegates and can be hired for half days as well as evenings. Refreshments of tea, coffee, still and sparkling water as well as homemade biscuits are offered as standard or Pippa will work with meeting organisers on tailor- made buffets. When buffet refreshments are ordered, depending on the number of delegates, Pippa can offer a delegate day rate which and waive part of the room hire charge. “The Head Shed is part of my home. I want meeting participants to feel they are my guests and to benefit from great meetings held in a very special venue,” said Pippa. Find out more: web: www.theheadshed.org.uk email: [email protected] or call: 07990 794700 Former RAF Squadron Leader and high- risk diver Gareth Lock will be sharing his expertise at the international Eurotek conference to be held in Birmingham. Gareth, who lives with his family in Malmesbury, will be giving a talk entitled The Diver’s Dilemma: Managing the Balance Between Risk, Reward and Pressures on Sunday December 2. Entrepreneur Gareth, the founder of Human In The System, applies skills developed from military aviation to improve diving safety and to help business leaders perform better within their organisations. He said: “A lot of diving is about risk management based on perceived risks. My presentation will be about how we really manage risk and uncertainty in high-risk sports and I’ll be looking at the mental biases and shortcuts we take with the associated problems that they introduce when it comes to understanding our own personal and team safety.” On Saturday December 1 at Eurotek, Gareth, who has twice been nominated for the Divers Alert Network Safety Diver of the Year award, will also be launching his 75- page e-book which contains three chapters from his forthcoming book, Under Pressure, which is due out in early 2019. The e-book will be available from his diving website, www.thehumandiver.com It’s been a busy few months for Gareth, who was in the RAF for 25 years. He was in Mexico in September where he ran a successful training session for a number of cave-diving explorers. Following that, a trip For more info: www.humaninthesystem.co.uk to Lake Tahoe saw him run a training session for the American Academy of Underwater Sciences. “I presented a proposal to develop a programme to help their divers, dive safety officers and dive control boards improve the safety and performance of their teams as well as improve their research. The proposal was accepted, so I’ve been tasked with writing specific training materials for them,” he said. He has just returned from a diving conference in Germany, where he gave a presentation entitled Divers as Heroes and Divers as Villains. In November he was a guest speaker at the Diving Equipment & Marketing Association conference in Las Vegas, and trained five senior staff from the Divers Alert Network in Malta on human factors and non- technical skills. The courses provided by Gareth through his company Human In The System, educates divers – or any team undertaking any activity – the importance of decision-making, situational awareness, communication skills, teamwork and managing stress and fatigue. If you want to know more about how Human In The System can help your team visit www.humaninthesystem.co.uk or email [email protected]. The Eurotek advanced diving conference takes place on the weekend of December 1 and 2 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. For more information, visit: eurotek.uk.com