Thinking of growing your business this year but afraid of the cost of developing your staff? How would you like to accelerate your growth plans at no extra cost? With these new training grants you can claim up to a maximum of £2,000 per employee as match funding so you can effectively double your training budget!
With the skills gap still a major issue in workplaces today, a number of recent reports have pointed towards giving employers more involvement in the design of training programmes.
Employers will be empowered to design and develop their own apprenticeship standards and qualifications, so they can address skills shortages that are threatening growth, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has announced yesterday.
Responding to the review on apprenticeships carried out last year by entrepreneur Doug Richards, the Government has said apprenticeships should be more focused on the needs of employers as some businesses find they are not tailored enough to their requirements. Clegg said he believes it is “vital” that apprenticeships are tailored around what employers want.
Clegg thinks this will enable the employer to design their own qualifications and choose their own training provider, rather than getting a “one-size-fits-all-programme” that is “bad for apprentices” and “bad for employers”.
Succession planning is essential for any business intent on long term survival and is critical to ensure the future leadership of the organisation. That’s why ILM set out to find how businesses identify and develop the people who will become their future leaders, and what potential future leaders could do to improve their career prospects. Whether the aim is to develop potential leaders for the organisation internally, or to recruit the most talented external candidates to nurture and promote, in an increasingly competitive world, the search, retention and development of the leaders of tomorrow is complex and challenging.
The ILM conducted in-depth interviews with senior HR professionals in predominantly large corporate organisations and consulting firms. The sample size was large enough to provide a breadth of coverage, while the approach ensured a richness and depth of response which meant that the subtleties of the respondents’ different approaches were captured.
You’ve heard about walking the talk now the new fad is “walk-and-talks” according to the Sunday Times and the author Nilofer Merchant. Well what’s so new? We’ve been offering and delivering walking the talk events for many years with our clients seeing the benefit of this innovative approach.
So what exactly are “walk-and-talk” events? Well they are the art of conducting business meetings on the move and in our case in an inspiring environment taking people out of their comfort zone.
Last week we were lucky enough to have picked up another award in recognition of our green business practices. This was awarded to a business that has demonstrated a dedication to adopt or improve sustainable green business practices within their operations.
View this video to find out the reasons why we won this award. Click on “More”
Only 18% of employers expect candidates to have received management training prior to being appointed to a management position!
To complete successfully on the global stage UK plc needs a steady stream of management talent capable of delivering strong economic growth. Creating business leaders and managers should be a top priority for UK business and requires a fully functioning management talent pipeline.
These are the findings of a recently published report by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). They set out to understand the state of the UK’s management pipeline and where it could be improved. An independent report was commissioned with 750 UK organisations across the public and private sectors to identify the challenges they face in recruiting and developing skilled leaders and managers.
By talent-pipeline they mean a joined-up approach to leadership development that enables a flow of skilled and capable individuals through an organisation. A talent-plan meanwhile is the means by which a talent pipeline is implemented and defines the skills and knowledge required to ensure the future needs of a business are met.
Call of the Wild have recently been successful in winning two contracts with English local authorities and one with a Welsh local authority. Our expertise in management and leadership development has been recognised by Devon County Council, the London Borough of Enfield and Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council.
Call of the Wild have been awarded contracts to develop the leadership and management skills of staff within both Councils. These will be accredited Institute of leadership and Management courses for managers at various levels from first line, aspiring and senior management.
The courses being delivered are:-
Become Part of an Exciting New Concept in Social Media Training – The First of its Kind!In partnership with one the foremost social media training companies in the UK, Marketing Tom Media, we have jointly designed this groundbreaking social media course entitled Social Media Interactive.
It represents a break from traditional social media training and combines social media tools with management training and team building approaches.
The course is unique in that it bridges the gap between learning social media tools and the application/transfer of the learning and use of those tools into the workplace in order to maximise the commercial benefit to the organisation. It provides the missing link between learning and transfer of learning to the workplace using the combined expertise of social media gurus and best practise from the business world in the context of management and organisational change.
It’s not just the England football team who are champion chokers we’ve seen numerous elite sporting teams and individuals display mental resilience over the summer with much to come with the Olympics. Bradley Wiggins being the most recent example of displaying not just physical but also mental toughness in the Tour de France
Examples are Andy Murray in the Wimbledon final against Roger Federer where how many times did you hear the commentators refer to each player either displaying or needing to show mental resilience under extreme pressure. What is it that allows someone like Roger Federer to serve on match point down and display no nerves and serve an ace. What sets him apart and makes the difference between becoming multiple grand slam champion and a nearly man. The same principle applies to golf. What enables one player to stand on the 18th green and sink that 6ft putt to win the championship when the majority of others fail under pressure on the run in. Adam Scott in the British open comes to mind in the recent British Open.
This month we are lucky enough to be featured in the Wales Business Insider magazine, the business magazine for Wales with news, business advice and profiles of Welsh companies. The interview concentrates on how we as a Company and management team balance business, helping the community and working with old friends.
We are an independently-owned, limited company set up by three friends who grew up together. Geraint, Mark and Kevin are all local lads who have known each other since school. Having studied at University, they all returned to their home town to develop a business which encompassed their interests. We all have different but complementary skill sets which mean we work extremely well together. Having the same background and knowing each other since childhood means we all have the same core values which builds trust and respect within the management team.
In these difficult economic times businesses are always looking for innovative and cost effective means of recruiting new staff and introducing creativity into companies. This is why many UK companies are utilising graduate recruitment and internship schemes available in the UK.
There are many such schemes available in the UK which aim to support the deployment, development and retention of graduates’ high level skills, knowledge and innovative potential for businesses.
Your business could benefit from offering work experience to a student or graduate, take advantage of the cash support for staff training, recruit a student or graduate through a work placement or advertise a vacancy free of charge.
Graduate Advantage offers FREE recruitment services to small and medium sized (SME) businesses across the West Midlands.Internships can vary in length from short projects to longer term roles (maximum of 12 months) and come in a variety of flavours including paid and voluntary.
To assist an SME with finding their graduate intern we offer a number of services including:
They can find you graduates with skills in areas including: Marketing, Business, IT, Science, Design and Engineering as well as enthusiasm and a genuine desire to gain experience. They have had graduates complete internships in all business sectors with projects including:
1. Graduate Talent Pool
Graduate Talent Pool is a new service, designed to help match the skills businesses require with those offered by new and recent graduates. On this website you can advertise internship opportunities for free, directly to graduates. You can also register up to 10 sifting questions so that only the most suitable graduates apply for your vacancies.
2. Regional Assistance
Graduate East England
Helping Graduates into Work
Graduate Central
Graduate Advantage
Graduate Jobs South
Go Wales
Call of the Wild specialise in graduate training and development with our courses such as creating future leaders, Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) courses, recruitment and assessment of graduates.
GO Wales is a European Social Fund and Welsh Government funded project. GO Wales aims to support the deployment, development and retention of graduates’ high level skills, knowledge and innovative potential in businesses in Wales.
The project offers a variety of services to help businesses recruit and retain graduate staff. Your business could benefit from offering work experience to a student or graduate, take advantage of the cash support for staff training, recruit a student or graduate through a work placement or advertise a vacancy free of charge.
The opportunities are as follows:-
GO Wales Graduate Training and Development Fund offers financial support for training and development of graduate level staff in Welsh SMEs. You may be able to access up to £1,500 per person to up-skill your business.
The benefits of the scheme include:
If you are interested in accessing this funding to develop your graduates by using our bespoke graduate training development programmes then give us a call and use our experience to get the best out of your talent. Whether it be identifying future leaders, our Institute of Leadership and Management courses (ILM), or developing team working then we can help.
If you are looking to select and recruit graduates then also take a look at our assessment centre services.
GO Wales Work Placements give you the opportunity to attract the best students and graduates to your business. Employ a skilled individual to work on a short term project and receive a subsidy towards the salary costs
GO Wales offers you the opportunity to employ someone with a degree (or studying for a degree) to complete a project while working for your company for around 10 weeks
By taking part in the scheme, you will receive:
•A choice of high quality students and graduates
•People with specific knowledge and skills that can add value to your business
•A 6-10 week project completed
•Funding towards salary costs – up to £950
•A chance to see if the company can benefit permanently from graduate skills
GO Wales Jobs is the only free website in Wales dedicated to graduate recruitment Businesses and other organisations in Wales can advertise an unlimited number of vacancies via our online vacancy advertising service.
GO Wales Work Tasters are designed to provide students and new graduates with a ‘taste’ of a particular career or working environment.
The Go Wales project website can be found here.
Call of the Wild have this month been informed that our prestigious Investors In People (IIP) Standard has been renewed for a further 3 years. The Inspector actually commented that in all the years of visiting companies for IIP our Company was one of the best he’d seen.
The Investors in People Standard is a business improvement tool designed to advance an organisation’s performance through its people. Developed in 1990 by a partnership of leading businesses and national organisations, the Standard helps organisations to improve performance and realise objectives through the management and development of their people
Call of the Wild, being one the foremost leadership and management development companies in the UK already provide innovative solutions for Companies to develop their people. Our mission statement contains at its heart our objective of delivering business improvement through the continuing professional development of our own staff.
Kevin Gould, Director of Learning and Development, said “Through the renewal process we have sought to formalise our existing training culture and demonstrate a continued commitment towards developing ourselves and others. By renewing this Standard it will reinforce to our clients that we are a progressive Company fully committed to delivering business improvement through people development.”
Multi-award winning Call of the Wild prepare and deliver research based leadership, team and personal development programmes to a range of public and private sector companies across the UK. There’s less chalk and talk from us with a focus on your bottom line. We seek to make a difference in the workplace by measuring outcomes and delivering a return on investment.
A new survey published this week by the HR Group Penna and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) found that 43% of managers found their managers ineffective.
The main criticisms of managers include not setting clear direction, failing to manage conflict well, not providing development opportunities and not asking for feedback on their performance. As a result staff felt less committed to their organisations.
Manager effectiveness is closely linked to business performance with 80% of managers in high-performing organisations rated as effective compared with39% in low-performing organisations. We are in challenging times for businesses and developing effective managers allows them to make better decisions and release the potential of the people who work for them this increases how engaged they are and this impacts on the bottom line.
By 2017 the UK will have a requirement for a further 2 million new managers and there is little sign of preparation to meet this need. One problem is that the UK’s managers are severely underqualified compared with other professional groups, with ONLY one one in five holding a management-related qualification. The research found that young managers often take on their first management role without any training and feel they are in a catch-22 situation – they cannot get training unless they are managing people but then if they apply for a management role they have not got any experience or training.
The research found 26 types of development in use and a real gap between what managers rate as effective and what companies provide.
Managers rate MBAs, management qualifications and management programmes by external providers highly but the most the most commonly provided development by organisations includes on-the-job experience, professional body membership and appraisals/skills audits. The research found that:-
Leadership and management courses with qualifications, including CMI and Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), are rated highly, particularly by younger or first line managers which suggests that new managers need to learn the techniques of management before they are effective.
Coaching is rated as very effective by experienced managers. However in spite of the enthusiasm for development only 47% of managers report that they get the chance to use the skills they gained suggesting that organisations need to provide development which is relevant and then provide opportunities for managers to build on their training.
For more information on the CMI survey click here.
Are you 100% confident that you and your leaders are equipped with the skills necessary to deliver sustainable business growth during tough economic times?
How would you like to receive up to 50% funding from the Welsh Government towards enhancing your Leadership and Management skills? The Enhancing Leadership and Management Skills (ELMS) programme is aimed at funding training courses seeking to improve and support the development of skills and capacity within Welsh companies and organisations.
We have now had two new courses approved by ELMS which means if you book theses courses you can benefit from up to 50% funding. The courses are:-
If you are interested in improving your or your organisation’s leadership and management skills in Wales then contact us and we can put you in touch with a Human Resource Development (HRD) advisor who will work with you free of charge.
The Employer Ownership of Skills pilot offers all employers direct access to public investment; up to £250 million over two years to design and deliver their own training solutions. The Government are inviting proposals from employers for the first phase of the pilot, covering up to £50 million. It asks employers to set out how they would use public investment, alongside their own, to improve the skills of their current and future workforce.
Skills are essential for our future prosperity.. This prospectus invites employers to come forward with radical proposals that test the full potential of employer ownership. The overall aim of the pilot is to find more effective and sustainable ways to improve skills in the workforce and to use these improved skills to drive up productivity and growth. The Government are looking for proposals from employers that support the following key objectives:
The aim of the pilot is to raise the contribution of skills to economic growth. It is therefore primarily targeted at private sector businesses, although proposals from public and voluntary sector employers will be considered. This opportunity is open to all employers irrespective of size and sector. Whilst bidding organisations can be based anywhere, the benefits of proposals must focus solely on England.
The Government want to see significant and scalable proposals for skills investment and therefore the minimum cash investment from Government will be £250,000 for collaborative proposals involving SMEs, and £1 million for individual or consortia bids involving large employers (defined as employing
250 employees or above). The Government will continue to assess the appropriateness of the eligibility criteria throughout the pilot.
Full investment criteria, application forms and guidance will be available towards the end of February 2012 on the pilot website here:-
(www.ukces.org.uk/employerownership).
Questions and enquiries regarding the Employer Ownership of Skills pilot can be submitted to:-
employerownershipqueries@bis.gsi.gov.uk
Considerable dissatisfaction with the quality of leadership in Wales has been expressed by respondents to the Wales Leadership Survey conducted in partnership betwen the Leading Wales Awards and Cardiff Metropolitan University (Cardiff Met).
The online survey that was undertaken in December last year revealed that respondents struggled to name Welsh leaders with only 50% being able to name two or more. In addition, almost 40% said they were very dissatisfied with the performance of their own business leaders including their decision-making and general leadership skills.
Aneurin Bevan and former Leading Wales Award recipient, Rhodri Morgan, were named as the two top Welsh leaders. However, disappointingly, no Welsh person made it into the list of top ten world leaders which was headed by Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela.Not one Welsh woman made it into the top ten Welsh leaders and only Margaret Thatcher made it to number 6 of the top 10 world leaders.
Of resonance to the rest of the UK, 60% are in agreement that management and leadership skills development is very important to the overall success of an organisation. The responses indicated that 85% of businesses have training budgets in place, and over 93% clearly recognise a need for skills development as a major part of organisational success. It would be hoped that these figures would be duplicated across the UK as they are encouraging in the current economic climate
Respondents were split on the question of whether leaders are born or made with 55% voting for leaders being made. The values we rate most in our leaders: vision, inspiration, communication, integrity and passion.
Call of the Wild are previous double winners of the Leading Wales Awards
The current business climate dictates that managers and leaders are able to fully engage their teams and deliver outstanding performance. Are you 100% confident that you and your leaders are equipped with the skills necessary to deliver sustainable business growth during tough economic times?
How would you like to receive up to 50% funding from the Welsh Government towards enhancing your Leadership and Management skills? The Enhancing Leadership and Management Skills (ELMS) programme is aimed at funding training courses seeking to improve and support the development of skills and capacity within Welsh companies and organisations.
If you are interested in improving your or your organisation’s leadership and management skills in Wales then contact us and we can put you in touch with a Human Resource Development (HRD) advisor who will work with you free of charge to:
NB – Grants available for private businesses not the public sector or those who have received more than 50% funding from Welsh Government grants! SMEs and National/ International companies with operations in Wales are eligible
The British Chambers of Commerce predicts that growth will be flat this year, with one quarter of contraction, but says a full-blown recession is not inevitable if the government acts. The BCC said while the results of its quarterly survey of 7,580 businesses are concerning, they do not indicate a recession – two quarters of contraction – and are still better than those seen in the worst phase of the last downturn.
The UK economy is set to stagnate in the first quarter of the year but a “new recession is not a foregone conclusion”, the business lobby group said on Tuesday writes The Guardian
Our next Effective Communication Skills Training Course . As background in order to improve business performance we need to improve our communication skills. One way of doing this is to understand what barriers exist to achieving effective communication.We need to overcome the barriers to communication that exist both in the sender as well as the receiver of a message.
Every person has a self-concept which can act to shut out information or opinion that is not in line with it. If we think of ourselves as important, behaviour that indicates that the other person does not see us in this way can cause anger.
A boss may be unable to receive instruction from a secretary on how to operate a word processor, not because he or she is incapable of learning nor because the secretary is incapable of teaching but simply because the role of learner does not square very easily with the status of superior.
Our next open course is scheduled for 15th December 2011 in London. Managers today are busier than ever with heavy workloads and pressure brought on by the current economic climate. Also in the current climate you need to get as much effort and application out of your employees as you can to ensure maximum performance.
So how can you acheive this – through developing your workplace coaching skills on this coaching course? Learn how to unlock a person’s potential to maximise their own performance
Institute of leadership and Management research shows that 95% of organisations believed coaching as a development tool benefited the organisation, and 96% believed it benefited the individual.
Visit our Coaching Course page – An Introduction to Coaching in the Workplace for more information
Everyone will have their own understanding of what management is and what leadership is and the distinction between them. However this understanding is often blurred and by gaining an insight into the differences individuals can become better leaders.
The dictionary defines management as being in charge, controlling, administrating, handling. Leadership is defined as being the principal or “front-runner” , holding the chief role. However another distinction is as a leader you need followers. As a manager you don’t all you need are resources, money, projects for example. There are 3 components to any situation:-
This is us last week being presented, along with other sponsors, with a London Welsh Rugby Football Club shirt in our capacity as one of the Club’s sponsors. The shirt was presented by Welsh and British Lions rugby legend John Dawes.
Mark Soanes, director of Call of the Wild, said: “To be a member of the London Welsh RFC Business Club is important to us on so many levels, not just as a business but as rugby fans. To be associated with – and be able to support – a club with such a rich heritage is extremely gratifying to us.”
