A chance to go deeper
Real and relevant experience is key to understanding the particular context a business operates in. Read our latest findings and articles about the current challenges businesses are facing.
How Non-Levy Payers can thrive with the Apprenticeship Levy
To be a levy payer, your organisation must have an annual payroll exceeding £3 million per year. If you do not meet this requirement, whilst you may not be a levy payer, you can still utilise the apprenticeship to upskill your people.
In the last few years, almost £3.5 billion of unused levy was reclaimed by the Exchequer. So why not utilise the funding where others are not?
L&D Budgets vs. The Apprenticeship Levy
Every year we face the upward battle as L&D budgets become more limited as businesses look to reduce costs and allocate resources to other aspects of the business. The reality is that people will always need training as they advance their careers and are promoted into management and leadership positions.
To conserve budgets, more and more businesses are looking to offset their L&D costs by utilising the apprenticeship levy.
5 Myths about the Apprenticeship Levy
In the last few years, an estimated £3.5 billion of unused levy has been returned to the Exchequer.
This is money paid by UK businesses to upskill their people that has simply been lost to - what we believe - is a lack of understanding and confusion of what the levy is and how it can be used.
As a provider of ILM Level 3 & 5 Apprenticeships, let’s debunk a few myths right now…
Presenting with Impact
Think back to school or university and chances are you can remember the dread and anxiety of being asked to present your work infront of your classmates having no real idea of what you’re doing and wishing to just get it done and out of the way. Enter the working world a few years later and long behold, you need to present solutions and ideas to different audiences, whether this be to customers, team members, managers, stakeholders, shareholders etc. and you need to be able to do this both clearly and effectively.
Keeping teams engaged
Do you ever have those days where you’re working on something either inside or outside of work…but it doesn’t feel like work? This is because you’re fully engaged in what you’re working on. This level of engagement towards work is something that every manager or leader dreams of from their teams.
5 ways to streamline for the better
One of the most important skills an effective manager must posses is the ability to manage time efficiently - both their own and their team's - to ensure tasks are completed on time and to the best standard possible.
InsideSales
Xant is a sales engagement platform that helps large enterprises create meaningful conversations with prospects & customers, accelerating revenue results.
Negotiation effectiveness
Increased by 53%
Sales conversions
Increased by 22%
Hoist Finance
Hoist Finance provides debt resolution services, helping people keep their financial commitments.
Negotiation Effectiveness
Increased by 56%
Sales Conversions
Increased by 22%
ServiceSource
ServiceSource provides outsourced in-house sales, customer success, renewals management and channel management solutions for businesses worldwide.
Renewal Quotas
Increased by 27.8%
Customer Service Pilot training
Used globally by all sites
Co-op Funeralcare
Co-op Funeralcare provides help when someone has died, assisting families to create their funeral arrangements and providing support and advice before, during and after the funeral.
Success?
We are still running this programme, but read more about what we are doing
Managing our mindset
It’s safe to say that 2020 has been a year of reaction. The arrival of Covid-19 has forced us to adapt our way of living, working and thinking and it’s safe to say not everyone has the right idea... if you haven’t figured it out, stockpiling toilet paper isn’t going to help you.
Transitioning to leadership
When transitioning from management into a leadership role, one of the most common challenges faced is shifting your mindset away from approaching situations as a “Manager” and instead, approaching them as a “Leader”.
Marginal gains
“The Sky is the Limit” “Dream Big” - many of us set ourselves such high goals to achieve that it can be overwhelming just thinking about the amount of work and time we need to put in in order to achieve those goals. At work, we can be given huge projects or targets that - on the surface - seem unachievable.
Motivating my team to perform
With lockdown measures easing across the U.K and Europe, more and more people are returning to work after several months of working from home, largely unobserved and potentially - depending on their job role - with a reduced workload.
5 ways for building resilience
As we go through life, we will all experience and overcome our own challenges in both our personal and working lives. The reality is, the world doesn’t care how sensitive or resilient you are. When challenges appear, they are there to test you, otherwise, it wouldn’t be a challenge.
How to positively say “no”
There are some people who just won’t take ‘No’ for an answer. You may be thinking “Good for them, never settle.” but sometimes people make demands that simply cannot be met due to limitations. When this happens and these individuals refuse to accept this, they prevent themselves from moving forward towards some kind of resolution that is positive for them.
Positive mindsets
Things will go wrong. It’s inevitable. No matter how much you prepare for a situation, there’s always a chance a curve-ball could be thrown leaving you feeling uncertain, demoralised, stressed, regretful, the list goes on. A key element that separates those that admit defeat and those that relentlessly persist, is the individual’s mindset during setbacks.
Culture of accountability
At some point, we are all responsible for something. Whether this is paying the bills, looking after a pet, managing a team, or completing a project. Most people enjoy being entrusted with responsibility as this makes them feel valued.
5 ways businesses use DISC
As a species, we are social creatures. The level of harmony amongst us is based entirely on how we interact with one another. DISC analyses our individual behaviours and communication preferences and quantifies this into data. This allows us to review and compare one person to another, identifying similarities and differences.
Returning to work
For many of us in the U.K, today will mark just over a week since lockdown measures allowed workers who are unable to work at home to return to work under Covid-19 conditions, including; maintaining social distancing where possible and wearing homemade PPE on public transport.