Tailored training for rookie line managers

Background

Asylum Welcome is a charity based in Oxford, which offers information, support and advice to asylum seekers. Its Chief Executive, Mark Goldring, is a former CEO of Oxfam.

The charity has grown recently due to a significant increase in demand for its services, which has led to the organisation asking individuals to line manage other colleagues. Many of them had had no previous line management training and were learning on the job. They had indicated that they would value learning more about operational, people and project management practices, so Asylum Welcome approached Action Planning to ask us to quote for a line management training programme.

“Action Planning gave us the best proposal,” said Mark. “It addressed our needs in a way that wasn’t grandiose or over-ambitious, and it was clear that Tracy was willing to work with us to tailor it to our needs, not off the peg.”

Brief

To put together and deliver a line management training programme, in conjunction with a mentoring programme, so that everyone on the training course also had a mentor who would work with them to cover the same ground being covered in the course. Tracy Madgwick, Action Planning’s HR lead, took the brief.

Process

Tracy worked with Mark to help source a team of 15 mentors/coaches, all of whom were qualified or in the process of qualifying and willing to give their time pro bono. Some of these mentors were Action Planning Associate Consultants. They all agreed to make a six-month commitment to work with Asylum Welcome.

We proposed a course of six half-day training modules, with one to two weeks inbetween modules for staff to practice with their mentor. Mark selected the modules that he thought would be most appropriate and then we worked with him to design and create some more organisation specific modules on finance, effective monitoring and reporting. We were able to adapt and add to the programme as we went along, including an extra module on EDI, bringing it. Up to seven modules in all.

The first and last modules were delivered in person at the charity’s offices, as we considered it important to have everyone together for the kick-off and the project closure. The other five were delivered online.

Outcome

About three-quarters of the staff finished the whole coaching programme, gaining a set of core skills which they need to use every day, and more confidence. As Mark said, “The ability to take a little bit of work time and know that your job was to be in a meeting for an afternoon made a real difference to them considering their way of work.”

While no-one would claim that seven afternoons is enough to turn anyone into the complete manager, the programme gave Asylum Welcome something to build on. They can add modules as required and establish a systematic approach to inducting and supporting new managers.

“Next year,” said Mark, “there is a cadre of staff below the level of coordinators and many of them are from a refugee background, with lived experience, so what the sense was in our final wrap up session was to design something that meets their needs and helps their development, so they’re ready to step into those coordinator roles when the time comes.”

Insight

This was the first of our in-house management development programmes that we delivered. The advantage of a modular programme is that as you go through the workshops you can build on the content that you’ve covered in other modules, which further embeds the learning.

Asylum Welcome were a delight to work with because they were enthusiastic and committed to the training. Mark saw the need for it and wanted to support this tranche of managers to really work as well as they possibly could. It was a good example of how we can adapt our programmes to the needs of the client and work out what they can do in-house and what they need Action Planning to do.