Preparing for Employment

The aim of this qualification is to develop learners' skills and confidence to assist them to prepare for, gain and continue in employment by teaching such concepts as;

Compliance
Attendance
Task completion
Problem solving
Safety

For more information please email nancy.galashan@tcat.ac.uk or call 01952 642332.

Profile

Guinness Northern Counties

Telford College have been working with Guinness Northern Counties delivering the Local Environmental Services NVQ and a solid foundation of a working partnership has been developed and the two organisations have a constructive and mutually beneficial relationship in terms of delivering a wide range of workplace training to Guinness Northern Counties employees and accessing work placements for the long term unemployed.

The partnership is based on a genuine desire from both partners to provide employees and potential employees with the latest comprehensive methods of working within the industry.

Training that is given provides employees with a nationally recognised qualification and help Guinness Northern Counties to develop the culture of learning and development for its staff whilst also helping the unemployed back to work, which is an integral part of Guinness Northern Counties vision.

Company History

Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) is a charitable provider of social housing. Who have been providing good quality affordable housing since 1966 and have been a member of the Guinness Partnership since April 2007. Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) is one of the UK's largest housing associations, providing nearly 27,000 homes across the north of England.

Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) employ over 700 people in over 20 regional offices and their corporate centre in Oldham, Greater Manchester.

Some of Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) awards and accreditations include Investors in People Gold standard and the National Housing Federation's Employer of choice award in 2006, Best Diversity Recruitment Strategy at the Recruiter awards for excellence 2010 as well as the Best Small Call Centre in Europe 2007. Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) are committed to the Guinness Partnerships vision of delivering great services, great homes and being a great place to work, which is why they embarked upon a Partnership with Telford College.

Project Enterprise

Project Enterprise was approved following a research study that was commissioned in 2008 on the opportunities to develop the regional Property Care Teams. The project aims to show how developing and investing in these teams can help Guinness Northern Counties to:

provide best value for money from neighbourhood services;
support enterprise and organisational development; and
increase levels of customer engagement and satisfaction.

Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) aim was to create regional Property Care Teams and to develop its existing team member's capacity to embrace change and work with external partners. At the same time wanting to move forward with its worklessness agenda and offer access to work placements for the long term unemployed.

Appreciating that the placements were only short term they also wanted to develop 'move on' options with external partners. Central to achieving these aims was its investment in their people and building sound working relationships with external partners.

Telford College

Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) developed partnerships with Groundwork Trust, Job Centre Plus, Manchester Solutions and Upturn enterprise. These partnerships help their customers by bringing in additional external investment to their neighbourhoods and also help the unemployed back to work thorough work placements (Future Jobs Fund).

As an Investor in People Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) wanted to equip their Future Jobs Fund trainees with as much knowledge, skills and experience as possible to enable them to (GNC)move on(GNC) from GNC with greater prospects and employability. Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) wanted to provide their trainees with a work based qualification that would hold a currency in the external job market.

At the same time Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) wanted to up–skill their existing Property Care Team staff members to make sure that they were trained to a high standard which was a consistent standard across the regions. This would help them achieve it's over arching aim of increasing customer engagement and satisfaction.

Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) recognised that by working with a national provider such as Telford College to deliver an NVQ level 2 in “Local Environmental Services” they would be able to achieve both of these aims. An added bonus to the NVQ was that it was a work based assessment which met their operational and business needs.

Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) chose the Local Environmental Services NVQ because not only was it relevant to their peoples' job roles but it also encompassed mandatory units that touched on some of their corporate objectives, such as Health and Safety and Customer Services.

Guinness Northern Counties (GNC) advertised the Local Environmental Services NVQ to their Property Care Teams in early 2010 and 27 staff members enrolled to do this qualification. More have since come forward.

Guinness Northern Counties trainees are with them for 6–9 months so they make sure that they are prioritised for completing the NVQ.

All their staff members are able to access a variety of learning and development events in addition to completing this formal qualification. GNC's comprehensive calendar of training events (a suite of over 50 courses) ranges from Equality and Diversity to Health & Safety training. These events help to support their people when training gaps are identified by the assessor. For example feedback from the assessor was that the learners needed further training on “sharps”. Guinness Northern Counties run a Health and Safety course which covers this subject area which they have now been booked to attend.

Whilst this programme is still in its early stages Guinness Northern Counties have already seen benefits such as:

Identifying training needs on group and individual levels.
Training their staff irrespective of their geographical location to the same standard, helping to impact on employee engagement by demonstrating their investment in its people.
Providing even more diversity in the way that they deliver its training.
Increasing staff confidence in participating in other learning and development interventions, such as skills for life training.

And whilst most of Guinness Northern Counties trainees are still with the organisation 2 out of the 4 trainees that have left the organisation have gone on to secure further employment.

Assessor Feedback

Feedback from Guinness Northern Counties people about the qualification and the assessors has been extremely positive.

“I thought the assessor was very professional the way he carried out the assessment of the trainees and myself, pointing out certain aspects of the tasks that we were doing. I think that it's a great idea that we are able to give these lads the opportunity to gain a qualification in their time that they spend with us. I hope it continues”.

Property Care Team Leader.

Another Team Leader has fed back that all his team are now eager to develop further and complete an NVQ at level 3. This demonstrates that the NVQ has helped to motivate its people, who traditionally may not have engaged in studying for a qualification. It is also extremely encouraging that their people are now taking ownership for their development and it's no longer a top down intervention.

Enabling managers to complete an NVQ level 3 will help them to further develop.

Developing GNC's non managers and supporting them through the same qualification will assist the succession plan for these teams.