LSC London Central Scheme Wins Prestigious Training Award

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A highly successful training programme run by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) London Central has been recognised by judges at a regional ceremony of the 2005 National Training Awards. The awards are run by UK Skills on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), and are widely recognised as one of the best benchmarks of training excellence.

The programme that is responsible for London Central’s award – run in partnership with Hartnell Training Ltd, a bespoke behavioural change and management consultancy – was designed to generate a high performance culture in their Skills team. London Central invested £21,000 in the project, and trained 32 staff in six days of intensive workshops.

Turn Around

“Before the training, the Skills team was driven by a volume approach to traininginvestments – handling over 100 small projects, often reacting as organisations withtraining ideas approached the LSC for support,” explained London Central’s Director of Skills Tony Nelson. “Staff lacked the skills to shape the publicly funded training market to properly meet employer needs.”

This situation needed addressing, and the LSC London Central decided to work with Hartnell to change matters. To turn this situation around, London Central and Hartnell devised a series of workshops on high performance team dynamics, action planning, transactional analysis, building rapport, networking and information gathering. The transformation in the staff who attended the sessions was apparently immediately noticeable.

Reorganised, Refocused, Retrained

“The team has been reorganised, refocused and retrained”, enthused Nelson. “Evaluation of the intervention has shown 88 per cent of the team and 100 per cent of managers increased their effectiveness and recorded favourable comments from external stakeholders.” By putting the skills learned on the programme into practice, the team have been in a position to help an additional 81 employers achieve the coveted Investor in People (IIP) status. They have also raised the total number of other employers assisted with training from 227 to 1,312.

Mr Nelson said he was delighted that the programme had received the recognition it deserved. “The award is for an outstanding training programme and reflects the professionalism of my team and the excellence of our partner, Hartnell Training Ltd”, he said.

Joe Paget

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