| “We were particularly pleased with the way our staff responded once we announced that we were going to work towards the Standard. They were extremely positive because they could see the longer term benefits to the Charity.” |
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Company Background
Originally formed in 1946, the charity Mencap was established to work with adults and children with learning difficulties. There are over 7,800 people working with the charity in around 600 homes around the country. In addition, it has three further education colleges, five day centres and forty-five employment offices - as well as other projects involving the arts or sport. The Education and Employment Business Unit within the charity was recognised as an Investor in People in 2006.
The Challenge: Achieving the Standard
One of the main drivers for Mencap to achieve the status of an Investor in People was the increasing requirement by funding bodies for the organisation to use externally recognised quality standards. Andrew Crammond, Special Projects Manager at Mencap states: "Because all our funding in education and employment comes from the statutory sector, it was important for us to be able to demonstrate that we would make best use of this funding within our centres.” Andrew continues: “We were particularly pleased with the way our staff responded once we announced that we were going to work towards the Standard. They were extremely positive because they could see the longer term benefits to the charity." A staff questionnaire, with a positive response of over 80%, showed that the charity was already well on the way to achieving the Standard with its existing practices, but improvements in certain areas were required. In particular, some job roles were flagged up as being undervalued, as there were limited options for staff to progress to management level.In addition, support roles such as finance and administration felt that they were excluded from many of the learning and development opportunities.
The Results
In order to make best use of their own resources, and ensure everything was in place as quickly as possible, the charity enlisted the help of a qualified consultant to assist them in the initial stages. Since achieving recognition, succession planning within the organisation has become more structured, and interim management roles have been established to stretch those staff on their way to the management posts. There have also been changes to some of the working practices to ensure that support staff are now very much part of the team, and their involvement in strategy and decision making is encouraged. Andrews explains: "Since gaining recognition we have found that staff morale has really lifted, and everyone votes for a ‘Staff Member of the Year Award’. He adds: “We have also just had a week-long inspection from the Adult Learning Inspectorate which was shorter than it would normally have been, as they took into account the work involved in our Investors in People recognition."
