Jun
19
2014
Training partnerships: how did it work for NatCen Social Research
Over the past few years the Centre has been delivering training for NatCen and in 2012 we were pleased to be chosen as an external partner in NatCen’s Management and Leadership Programme. I caught up with Kandy Woodfield, Director of Learning, to talk about the project.
In the beginning
In 2012 NatCen Social Research and the Centre joined together to develop and deliver a new management and leadership programme (MLP) to support NatCen’s People Strategy goal of excellent leadership at all levels.
The aim of the programme was to deepen and widen NatCen’s management and leadership capability across the organisation ensuring that everyone could do work that mattered. Kandy really wanted to make sure that this programme was robust, bespoke and would really benefit their managers.
NatCen were aiming for a significant shift in their management culture with a focus on driving and sustaining people and organisational performance, including continuous improvement, better performance management and strengthened workforce development.
Goals for the programme included:
- instil and improve leadership at all levels of NatCen
- set, share and steer a compelling strategic direction for NatCen
- improve performance management across the business
- improve people management at all levels
- increase strategic project completion
Before approaching any external providers the NatCen L&D team undertook a rigorous consultation exercise with managers across the organisation. The senior management were involved in designing and agreeing the management and leadership framework. This was a pivotal stage of the planning process as it ensured that the vision and end result were in mind from the very beginning.
Following this, NatCen held a series of consultation meetings with the external training providers and did much design work jointly to ensure the programme was seamless and gave consistent messages to all managers.
The partnership
Sally Pearman, the Centre’s Deputy Managing Director, worked with Kandy and her L&D team understand NatCen’s needs. Sally selected a mix of management trainers who had third and corporate sector experience. NatCen has a wide range of specialists, so making sure the trainers could relate to all aspects of the organisation was important.
NatCen’s branding, key values and approaches were built into the training resources. This helped the training feel like a cohesive part of the programme rather than just a bolt on addition.
The training programme
NatCen’s MLP was launched in August 2012 with a campaign and a series of briefing meetings. Managers were introduced to the new management and leadership framework and a set of behaviours for all people managers.
Over 100 managers took part in the training programme. The Centre delivered training for Managers in two tiers delivering:
1 - Moving into Management
2 - Moving on in Management
Allocation of the managers into the tiers was based on an appraisal of their current managerial capability (through a 360 degree assessment and benchmarking process) and, to a lesser extent, their seniority and extent of prior management experience. Strand groups were carefully constructed to ensure a balance between staff from different parts of the organisation to maximise learning from other areas of the business.
The MLP was designed to include a varied mix of formal training, individual feedback and assessment (through 360 degree assessment or psychometric profiling), self-led learning (including e-learning), peer learning and one-to-one support. In addition, NatCen maintained a blog providing sources of further information and reading around key themes and all participants received access to the ILM membership centre which provides a range of online resources.
Each strand involved:
- formal workshops delivered by external partners
- an ILM award or certificate
- a coaching skills workshop
- access to e-learning
- follow on peer action learning sets
Completion of an ILM certificate or award was offered to all participants. This was not compulsory but offered staff an opportunity to gain a widely recognised management award.
Results
The formal workshops were positively appraised with very few exceptions. The combined evaluation score for these workshops has not dropped below 4 out of 5 and participants have reported high levels of satisfaction with the content, duration and delivery of these sessions.
NatCen will only be able to judge the impact of the training programme on management performance in the coming months but informal feedback from managers is that they are using the techniques they learnt in their roles and feeling more confident as a result.
NatCen conducted an online ‘end of year 1’ questionnaire with all participants, some of the findings are provided below:
- 81% were satisfied or very satisfied with the external trainers/facilitators expertise
- 83% agreed/agreed strongly that they had a better awareness of the range of approaches they can take to management and leadership
- 63% agreed/agreed strongly that they have more confidence in managing people
- 61% agreed/agreed strongly that their skills in people management have improved
- 71% agreed/agreed strongly that they have a better understanding of their own management style/preference
Lessons learnt
This is the first time NatCen had delivered such a complex programme involving a partnership approach with multiple external providers; psychometrics; assessed elements and ongoing internal embedding activities.
A lot of time and thought was given to how NatCen’s L&D team worked with external partners and the collaborative approach adopted paid dividends. As a result of joined-up thinking the formal training felt relevant to participants, not abstract or distant from their everyday work and linked in well to other elements of the programme. Delegates reported being inspired by the programme, feeling more confident and better equipped to undertake their roles and valuing the opportunity it gave them to reflect on their own practice and their peers approaches to management challenges.
Advice from those that know
This was a successful training partnership which resulted in over 100 NatCen employees completing the management and leadership programme. Think this could work for your company? Here are some words of wisdom from the companies involved:
Although getting to know NatCen and the delivery of the workshops took some scheduling it was the background preparation and planning that made the programme such a success.
Taking time in the initial stages to think about the bigger picture, what success would look like and how to involve staff is imperative to ensure a development programme feels and is properly embedded.
Kandy scheduled in a number of meetings and catch ups throughout the delivery phase which ensured the coordinators and trainers could feed in their views and tweak our approach when necessary. That level of flexibility meant we could improve the offer.
If you are thinking of developing a new training programme or want to improve on your current training programme give the Centre a call on 020 7490 3030 to see how we can help.
