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Outplacement Case Study: Learning and Skills Council
The Situation
The MKOB office was facing a very significant cut in jobs. David Ansell, Executive Director, was looking for a career consultancy that could help employees through a lengthy period of uncertainty in the run-up to the Council's selection process. Could we work with employees who required reassurance about their skills, who wanted to explore the options open to them (both inside and outside the LSC) and who felt they needed help when faced with challenging selection processes? The taskWe agreed with the LSC that we would work one-to-one with as many people in the area as possible. We also planned to run workshops covering "Managing your Future" - dealing with uncertainty - and "Preparing for Selection" - how to prepare for competency interviews and selection centres. We later added a "Presentation Skills" workshop at the request of a number of employees. In agreeing the contract with LSC we proposed that a part of our fee should be contingent on our meeting agreed measures of employee take-up and satisfaction with our services. The actionsOver the following months we became regular visitors to the LSC office in Kidlington - almost part of the family! We met regularly with individuals, discussing their concerns, helping them to identify skills, create their CVs, and plan for their approach to the changes ahead. We ran well-received workshops that helped to "de-mystify" the selection process, reducing the nervousness ahead of assessment days and interviews. We developed short workshops to coach employees whose assessments were to include presentations - something no-one was anticipating with glee! The resultsThe most obvious result is shown in the comments below - people were very pleased with the Connect service and enjoyed and benefited from our very individually focussed approach. We were delighted that the take up among employees significantly passed the target set for us by LSC, and the satisfaction measure was extremely positive - on a range of questions covering the helpfulness of the consultants, the value of the Connect website, reactions to our Workshops and our impact in helping people come to terms with an uncertain future, 95% of all responses were either positive or very positive. John Lodge, the Project Manager at LSC, told us that after an initial meeting before finalising the contract, he had doubted whether we really could deliver all that we were promising. Knowing the complexity of the challenge, he was concerned that we might be over-promising. When we were reviewing the project with John he said we had delivered on all our promises, and more - LSC had asked us to jump through a few hoops along the way, and we enjoyed doing so! Feedback from employees at Learning & Skills Council:"Extremely helpful workshop - excellent theme and preparation. I enjoyed the presentation practice as well as learning from colleagues." "Very powerful - I would recommend this approach to anyone going through the selection process." "Strangely I don't feel as daunted about the whole process as I did previously. Attending workshop has made me take time out from work & actually think about the presentation aspect - therefore useful in that sense also!" "The Connect support has been excellent. The discussions held and information given have been very relevant, informative, positive and light hearted all tailored to specific strengths, skills and interests." "I have found the Connect teams support invaluable. Found the team very approachable & their advice / guidance extremely useful in preparing a CV, for interviews and in evaluating my future career aspirations. A huge thank you!!" "I've found after the original consultation it was beneficial to have them on site for the odd questions. The Website is a very useful tool as a check list when applying for jobs." "Overall excellent - and I have now received an offer of employment from an external organisation. Many thanks!!" |
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The Learning & Skills Council, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire (MKOB) contacted Connect to request support for employees facing uncertainty and change during the LSC's organisation re-shaping programme known as Theme 7.
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