"The Professional Learning Advisors who are our learners’ main point of contact are delightful, always happy to help, engaging and provide the right level of support and advice to ensure their success."
Why did Wiltshire Council decide to offer the Level 3 and 5 Leadership and Management training programmes?
At Wiltshire Council we had already developed our own Public Sector, Wiltshire Council focused, non-accredited leadership training programmes.
The workshop-based programmes are designed for Aspiring Wiltshire Leaders and Developing Wiltshire Leaders, with a view to developing careers and identifying our future leaders.
We wanted to augment our existing programmes with accredited Level 3 team Leader and Level 5 Operations / Departmental manager training programmes and there were two main drivers behind this:
1) It is becoming more important for employees to have a recognised management qualification in order to move into a management role within the Council.
2) By expanding our Leadership and Management training with an accredited ‘formal leadership and management’ development programme, we can create clear management and succession planning which serves as a pathway to promotion.
“It is becoming more important for employees to have a recognised management qualification”
Why did you choose KnowledgeBrief as your Leadership and Management Training Partner?
Funding in the Public Sector is always challenging as our number one priority is the delivery of services to citizens. However, we were able to utilise our Apprenticeship Levy pot for our Leadership and Management training programmes which removed the funding barrier.
As a Public Sector organisation, any service we procure must be based on value for money and deliver the best mix of quality and effectiveness. This meant we were required to go out to tender for our Leadership and Management training provider.
We searched the online Digital Apprenticeship Service for suitable providers and started the tender process.
KnowledgeBrief stood out and ultimately won the tender process because of their excellent blended approach to learning.
The combination of the online KBPRO® platform, training days and dedicated support through their Professional Learning Advisors, helped to set KnowledgeBrief apart from the other providers.
The success of the programmes can be seen across our eight cohorts of Level 3 & 5 learners, with more planned in the coming months.
How have you managed the ‘20% off the job’ requirement for Levy learners?
We have a number of in-house workshops for staff which cover a range of topics, with some being specifically tailored to the Leadership and Management programme.
Also, two of our apprentices set up a group called LAMS (Leadership and Management Training Support). The purpose of the group is to support learners with fitting study around work priorities, mentoring learners at different stages of the programme, increasing collaboration across the Council and networking through social discussion groups.
The group combined with our existing in-house workshops and the KnowledgeBrief ‘live learning’ approach — where for example work-based presentations and cross-functional collaboration count towards CPDs — makes the 20% requirement much less challenging.
If you were to recommend KnowledgeBrief, what would you say?
Working with KnowledgeBrief is brilliant, it’s a true partnership approach. If we ever have any issues, these are worked through and our feedback and requirements are used to continually develop the programme.
The Professional Learning Advisors who are our learners’ main point of contact are delightful, always happy to help, engaging and provide the right level of support and advice to ensure their success.