Home > Topics > Learning and Training in Organisations >

Learning from experience at City & Guilds

In this article from the Best Practice Club, Simon Morgan and Cathie Head from City & Guilds' Excellence and People directorate talk about the contribution its internal NVQ centre has made to the organisation's learning culture.

Established 125 years ago to deal with the issue of skills shortages, City & Guilds is the UK's leading provider of vocational qualifications.

It operates in over 100 countries worldwide and has eight overseas offices. There are 12 regional and national offices in the UK and the organisation employs over 700 staff. About 120 of those work out of the regional offices in the UK and about 40 are based overseas. The rest are in London. The organisation has grown significantly in the last year and has increased its head count by over 100, which reflects the increase in its business as it pursues its ambitious programme of change.

City & Guilds is organised into a number of business units one of which is the Excellence and People directorate. Simon Morgan, Head of Human Resources explains: "A couple of years ago there was a reorganisation of the business into six directorates. The Excellence and People directorate incorporates several business functions including Human Resources and Organisation Change, which comprises Business Improvement and Learning and Development. At the same time as this reorganisation a new corporate plan was drawn up which sets out some ambitious goals, one of which was to become a learning organisation. That's our business, so it's quite appropriate that we should be focusing our own staff on qualifications."

Centre of excellence

One aspect of the culture of learning at City & Guilds is its internal NVQ centre, managed by quality assurance co-ordinator, Cathie Head. She has taken the centre from concept stage through to its current status where there is a large number of City & Guilds staff taking NVQs in a range of occupational areas like customer service and administration.

"It started out with the occasional request from members of staff who were very much customer facing and thought that it would be helpful to have been through the NVQ experience themselves," says Head. "The centre now has 88 candidates who have registered for qualifications and in the last two and half years we've had 72 people achieving full qualifications and there are another 21 who are almost at the end of their NVQ programmes. The variety of NVQs on offer has grown to include management, procurement, learning development, assessment and verification. We're really practising what we preach, offering the same levels of support to our staff as we do our customers."

The internal NVQ centre operates in exactly the same way as any one of the external centres. Crucially, staff undertaking qualifications are provided with the same support, assessment and back-up as learners would get from an external centre. "A key to the success of our NVQ centre is dedicated support and backup. Cathie devotes all her time to managing the centre. It would be difficult to do it any other way," explains Morgan. "Over the last couple of years we've built up a significant network of internal assessors and verifiers, people who are doing their normal jobs but also helping candidates through their qualifications."

Participants in the internal NVQ programme at City & Guilds have found the experience confidence building and report that a real understanding of the qualifications has helped them give an improved level of customer service. "People feel it's really helped them in their jobs and are much more aware of what it's like to be taking qualifications," says Head. "As a result of having gone through the process themselves our NVQ candidates are more familiar with City & Guilds products and feel they're able to serve the customer more positively and credibly."

Knowledge bank

In pursuit of its goal of becoming a learning organisation City & Guilds defined the objective as creating an organisation that is both passionate and skilled at creating, acquiring, transferring and sharing knowledge and then is effective at harnessing this to change its behaviour. "We feel we're doing that with the internal NVQs," says Morgan. "And it's not just about learning from each other it's about learning from other businesses as well."

City & Guilds has been a member of the Best Practice Club (BPC) for five years. The Club is a knowledge-sharing network of organisations dedicated to improving business performance and achieving business excellence. City & Guilds first heard about the Club via the British Quality Foundation. Last year City & Guilds hosted a Case Study Day for other BPC members and featured the development of its NVQ centre. The chance to talk to people who have successfully implemented change within their own organisation is a very valuable one as Morgan explains: "The opportunity to network with likeminded BPC members has really helped City & Guilds and since the Case Study Day we've had a number of people contacting us for further information about how they might introduce NVQs into their own organisation."

Best Practice Club membership entitles anyone from a member organisation to go along to its networking events. It's not confined to one department or designated person. City & Guilds has benefited greatly since joining. "Our business improvement team regularly attend BPC events " say Morgan. "As we are using the Excellence Model we went to one case study day where an organisation was talking about its progress and had developed a questionnaire that it sent out to staff to help with self-assessment. We used that idea and tailored it to meet our own needs."

City & Guilds has also modified its approach to quality audits after attending a BPC case study day and learning how another member organisation was doing it. "Instead of compiling a schedule of audits a year in advance and sending them to departments and saying we're going to visit in August and look at this, that and the other, the emphasis has completely changed," says Morgan. "It's now down to the customer department to decide what it thinks needs to be looked at and request support in addressing business process issues. Quite a simple change but something that might not have happened were it not for the Best Practice Club Case Study Day."

As well as its involvement in the Best Practice Club there are other models and standards that City & Guilds uses for benchmarking itself against other organisations. "We use the CBI Headstart model of people management," explains Morgan, "which involves a cross-functional team of people completing a comprehensive questionnaire for our people management policies and practices. After a facilitated workshop a consensus score is derived which helps us compare how we perceive ourselves to be doing against other organisations. We are also an Investors in People accredited organisation. We feel there is a synergy between developing people and developing processes and systems across the business."

Tangible results

The self-assessment and evaluation programmes at City & Guilds reflect that staff motivation and commitment levels have improved with the introduction of the internal NVQ centre. "The results show that people see these qualifications as being highly relevant to their work," say Morgan. "And one thing that we're doing a lot better now is celebrating achievements. We have regular ceremonies for learners who have achieved their NVQs. The Director General presents them with prizes and we have champagne and canapés. The ceremonies are featured in our staff magazine. It's part of our culture to celebrate learning achievements and it helps to get the message across that we really value the contribution it makes to our business."

About Best Practice Club

The Best Practice Club (BPC) is a knowledge-sharing network dedicated to improving business performance. Now in its 11th year, the network is made up of over 350 member organisations including BP, BUPA, BNFL, Pfizer and NHS Information Authority. There are over 2,500 individual contacts sharing ideas, information and experience. For more information visit www.bpclub.com.

Back to top   

© 2004 Best Practice Club. Reproduced with permission. Any opinions or views contained in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Training Reference.

More from Training Reference

• Learning and training in organisations homepage
• Books about training strategy

Visit the Training Reference Directory to view supplier details for a wide range of courses, products and services.

Sponsored links

Back to top