The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 31: June/July 2017 | Page 33

BUSINESSWISE BUSINESSWISE BUILDING BETTER SOLUTIONS TOGETHER BusinessWise members Anne Messer of Bespoke Training Services and Lorraine Stevens of HR4Business have skills that complement each others business. After meeting at BusinessWise they saw a great opportunity to bring their skills together to offer businesses – both large and small – a one-stop package for managing their people effectively. As they’ve got to know each other they’ve developed a partnership to make the most of their skills and offer their respective clients seamless solutions to issues around staff training, personal development, recruitment and retention. Bespoke Training Services, run by Anne, provides tailor made learning solutions in leadership and management development, personal effectiveness and executive coaching to SMEs and corporate clients. HR4Business, run by Lorraine, works with SMEs in providing HR support, recruitment and training as well as offering Level A and B Psychometrics. Recently they’ve put together a training and development programme for a food manufacturer employing approx. 200 employees and an IT company with 180 employees. In this case Anne and Lorraine designed a development project for first line managers in order to provide the skills to successfully manage their teams. It was made up of modules over a six-month period, including a work based project to tie the learning back to the needs of the business and was specifically related to managing performance and developing people through coaching. The programme began with Lorraine delivering 360-degree feedback to the participants with a view to each identifying three or four areas for development. The point of this type of work is that an individual’s perception of how they are performing at work may be very different to how they are perceived by colleagues. This exercise gave the participants clear areas to work on individually during their management development programme, and it also gave the business a means of measurement. In this case, one staff member learned he was good at building relationships and supporting his team but he needed to work at seeing things through. Lorraine said “360-degree feedback is a powerful tool to raise self-awareness, helping us to see our blind spots and understand our relationships with different groups. What we think we are doing or achieving – may not be what we are actually doing or achieving in the eyes of our peers or our managers. Accepting this is a key step towards development especially for leadership roles.” Anne said “We have found using a spaced learning approach (spreading the learning over 6 months) builds in lots of opportunity for the attendees to practice their skills between sessions and therefore brings about lasting and positive behavioural change.” Both Anne and Lorraine can be found listed on the BusinessWise website at www.businesswise.org.uk HR4 Business Bespoke Training Services are offering a FREE learning and development assessment. HR4Business are offering a FREE one hour consultation to advise and support on your people matters. For an appointment email: [email protected] For an appointment email: [email protected] Let us help spread the word about your business www.businesswise.org.uk Member Benefits: • Not for Profit Organisation • Fees re-invested into the group • Exclusive business category • Opportunities for new business across all sectors • Low annual membership fee VISITORS If you are interested in visiting BusinessWise (all visitors can come along free of charge), we meet on Friday morning at 6.45am at Jury’s Inn, Swindon town centre. We are run on a not-for-profit basis and, as a non-competing group, one member will be the only member representing his or her sector in the room. We are currently looking for new members in these areas: Architecture Retail Dentistry Opticians Graphic Design Floristry Restaurant or food industry Plumber Fitness Sport GP practice Education Wellbeing/health-based Interested? If you would like to find out more – or come along as a visitor, please visit our website or call the BusinessWise Chair, Fiona Scott: 07789 270030 From left to right: Anne Messer of Bespoke Training Services and Lorraine Stevens of HR4Business For more info: www.businesswise.org.uk THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017 33