Roffey Park is one of the foremost Management Development Colleges in Britain with an international reputation. We have the benefit of their extensive facilities as they see our approach aligned with theirs. The University of Hertfordshire DMan course also use it and we sometimes combine sessions.
The origins of Roffey Park link to the thinking prevailing during the early 1940s that gave birth to the Welfare State, the National Health Service, the Tavistock and Northfield Hospital.
Roffey began life during the war years after a council of industrial andcommercial companies decided to set up a Rehabilitation Centre to care for people in industry who were suffering from overwork, strain and depression in 1943. This council included representatives from the Bank of England, Courtaulds, Reckitt & Colman and Rowntree and was designed to create congenial surroundings away from the workplace that could help to return people to productive roles in industry.
The centre took a holistic approach to treatment and combined medical treatment, dietary supervision, physical education and occupational therapy. In the first two years after opening, the centre treated 1,700 people. Later the Council also set up a Research and Training Institute. In the late 1940s the Institute’s work became more focused on well-being in the workplace and the Rehabilitation Centre became part of the St Thomas’s Group of hospitals and was absorbed into the new National Health Service (NHS). In the 1950s it ran bespoke development programmes and international programmes and became an educational charity in 1967.
Roffey now has a distinctive philosophy encouraging participants to speak about their personal experiences and to learn from each other in all its own management courses. So, we fitted into the context like a hand in a well-worn glove!
It is a place that unusually in these days of working to the 'bottom line', walks its talk and puts people first!
HYBRID LEARNING
Hybrid Learning enables meeting face-to-face alongside meeting on Zoom. So, if you are unable to be at Roffey Park you can take part as if you were physically present.
The downside of international hybrid learning is dealing with the different time zones. Our intention is to accept that some people will not be able to be present at every meeting. It is something we will all have to manage and is a characteristic of community groups.
OUR MEETING ROOM
Our meeting room is named in memory of Dame Caroline Haslett, a pioneering female engineer, champion of women's rights, and one of the founders of Roffey Park Institute. She was mainly interested in harnessing the benefits of electrical power to emancipate women from household chores, so they could pursue their own ambitions outside the home. In the early 1920s, few houses had electric light or heating, let alone electrical appliances; the National Grid was not yet in existence. She was largely responsible for the adoption of safety gates on UK electric sockets (no doubt saving many children's lives) and for the ring main circuit - both present in every UK house today. She also had a cable-laying ship named after her that laid the first electrical cable between the UK and France.
On liberating all women from 'soul-destroying drudgery', there is no doubt still a way to go(!). But who knows how many women she has helped 'liberate' during the war and in the post-war years by her example and her tireless campaigning?
Getting to Roffey Park
