Home > News > February 2005 > 24-Feb-2005

English Heritage cascades management development programme

After running a management development programme for its 150 Group and Departmental Directors and unit heads, English Heritage is now cascading the programme down to its next level of managers aiming to cover a further 250 staff.

The five-day programme, developed by executive education and research company Roffey Park, is designed to help individuals and the organisation to embrace change.

"We decided to run a concerted management training programme across the organisation, to help our senior managers understand their own management skills and drive through a programme of cultural and business change," said Isobel Hunter, English Heritage’s Human Resources Director.

"On one side we have staff whose role is to maintain our heritage sites, and on the other we have people who need to ensure our properties are run in a commercially effective way," said Isobel Hunter. "This can sometimes create tensions that we need to manage, so that we meet the standards we set for others and ensure that we maximise our income."

Roffey Park designed a Management Development Programme which is split into a three-day module, followed six weeks later by a two-day module. It covers issues such as leadership, people management, managing change, communication, managing performance, customer care and partnership working. The programme covers the provision of coaching and mentoring support to staff.

The senior managers have been working through the programme in cohorts of 12. After the two development modules, Roffey Park runs four facilitated 'Learning Set' meetings where the participants work together in two groups of six to help each other achieve their own personal learning objectives.

"The programme has helped our senior managers to champion change and to translate our strategic vision into practical tasks and outcomes for their teams," said Isobel Hunter. "The leadership and management benefits have been so well received that we now want to run the programme for the next level of managers, in a similar format. This will not only help them to increase their ability to contribute but it will also enable us to achieve change and build long-term sustainability into the organisation."

In addition to the programme, Roffey Park is running one-to-one coaching and external Learning Sets - involving Directors from other organisations - for the six members of English Heritage’s Executive Board.

"We felt the Executive Board members would benefit from different approaches, although the standard modules are on offer to them," said Isobel Hunter. "Roffey Park’s consultants proposed offering them a series of development options that they could choose from. This was very well received. Roffey Park’s consultants have also run a successful one-and-a-half day ‘intact team’ development session for our Executive Board, to help them work together more effectively."

External link

For more information about Roffey Park’s services, visit www.roffeypark.com

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