Hive | Heywood Pension Tech

A collaborative sense of community unites people here at Heywood Pension Technologies which is why we established Hive in 2016. Hive is a once-a-month community day for the entire business to learn and grow together.

Hive is an important enabler to our continued learning and development. Hive inspires us to connect with people across different areas of the business. The diverse backgrounds and skills of our people allow us to capture and share knowledge, help focus on our personal development and improve our working practices by providing a forum to grow, transform and innovate.

Offering a variety of content there is always something new and engaging for all. Sessions are facilitated under four main themes: Essential Skills, Culture, Business and Technology typically in the form of presentations, lightening talks, collaborations and mobbing programming session. From graduates through to senior leadership, anyone can facilitate a session.

There are also specially themed Hive days including employee benefit fairs, health and well-being, and business strategies. Hive is led by our people, for our people.

Story mapping

Story mapping plays an important part in planning. In this session we learned when we could use story mapping, where to start and some tips on breaking down the story. This session was useful for every member of the scrum team from the scrum master to the developers and testers!

Return of the FED - accessibility in mind

This session was an opportunity for an experienced front-end developer to share insights into creating websites that are both usable and accessible. The group discussed considerations and top tips for creating great websites.

How to plan and lead a creative retro

Retros are traditionally held by scrum masters but they do not have to be. This session shared a developer’s experience of a retrospective workshop at a tech meetup and how they implemented what they had learnt in their very own creative retro.

From code to customer

This session looked into the process of how we deploy our key products; those involved, the tech used and how it all fits together. This was pitched at a level where everyone in the business could gain a valuable understanding.

React vs Angular: a battle of Javascript frameworks

Following a two-week sprint to explore and compare the two biggest JavaScript frameworks, Team Reacular fed back to the business their findings and recommendations for the foundation of our future web applications.

Cocktail masterclass

What better way to welcome the weekend than with a collaborative interactive cocktail-making class? This session taught attendees how to impress guests with classic cocktails and offered an opportunity to meet some new people in a relaxed environment.

AI & Machine Learning

AI is all around us! In this session, one of our developers talked us through their experiences, looked at real-world examples and finished with a practical example.

Sleep is not to be slept on!

We spend 36% of our lives sleeping, with a good, healthy sleep playing life-changing roles for both body and mind. This not to be slept-on and fascinating session covered the benefits of practising good sleep hygiene.

Pet project: homebrew!

An end-to-end journey from ingredients to ingestion, this discussion covered the wonders of fermentation – from creating bespoke beers to fermented foods.

What our People Say

Don't just take our word for it, hear from our people the benefits of Hive...

Other organisations I have worked for said they would give everyone 1 day per month for personal development, however Heywood is the first one to really commit to it.

Leigh Tarver

Agile Lead

Hive has allowed me to really focus on the aspects of my role that I need to improve on, and is a very useful gateway to meet more people within the organisation! I find having a Hive day a month provides the perfect balance of day-to-day work and personal development.

Asadullah Haider

Developer

Delivering a Hive session helps reinforce my understanding and knowledge of a subject, as well as share that with others. It also helps me build relationships and a greater connection with others around the business

Scott Donovan

Scrum Master

Hive is a great asset to the company and has allowed me to upskill in many different areas, as well as keep up with developments in other parts of the business. It is also great to have some time available each month to study for qualifications related to my role.

Claudia Davey

Test Analyst

Having a day once a month where developers can get together and tackle intriguing problems not only helps to push our products forward but helps inspire developers to think outside of the box while learning to collaborate with people outside of their team.

Chris Clarke