20 | UK Enterprise Awards 2023 Apr23681 Best Education Management Organisation 2023 The Education and Skills Partnership Ltd, based in Ashford, Kent, is a unique company with a focus on providing excellent training, education, and support to learners. It helps UK employers and learners to grow their skill set with impactful strategies in support of apprenticeships and other national training courses. The Education and Skills Partnership Ltd is a national training and education provider, specialising in apprenticeships and Government funded support for the Telecoms, Retail, Supply Chain, Health, and Government sectors. Its services include pre-employment, apprenticeships, short courses, and learner recruitment. All training is tailored to suit the individual needs of each learner/employer. It has been rated by Ofsted as grade 2, good, and is trusted by some of the largest brand name companies in the UK. The company has an open-door policy, to encourage great communication through questions, complaints, or suggestions. It encourages feedback and discussion about any concerns learners or employers might have, and is delighted to be able to bring together its experts, and build greater knowledge through collaboration. It thinks of its own staff as part of the family, and endorses them with a culture that is inclusive, empowering, and accepting. The company values teamwork, empathy, problemsolving, transparency and honesty in its family of educators. Building on long-term relationships with its team of insightful problem solvers, the company determines to find ideal solutions for clients, learners, or organisations. It operates from a 360-degree perspective to ensure a positive impact for everyone who is involved. The Education and Skills Partnership (ESP) builds end-to-end solutions to provide resolutions no matter what. It will always go the extra mile to make sure every individual, and every organisation, has a resoundingly positive future ahead of them. As a solution-based business, it is resolved to never leave a learner behind. It always puts its people (the learners) at the very heart of what it’s doing, to help them reach their full potential. ESP coaches and trainers are highly skilled individuals who are well qualified in what they do. It can help whether clients are looking to upskill their workforce, require support delivering their curriculum, or are struggling to embed internal learning. It is there to create solutions tailored towards its clients’ specific goals. “We’re passionate about meeting the needs of employers, placing learning at the heart of their talent attraction and retention strategy.” The ESP approach begins with discovery, which is where it will find out what unique challenges its client-businesses might be facing, and work with them to design a tailored plan and programme to deliver the required results. To design the programme effectively, it collaborates with its clients, always conscious of the complex skills and challenges many businesses bring with them. It will help create a learning programme that meets the needs of both the business and its people. The next step is funding. ESP will help clients to maximise their training budgets by making the best use of Apprenticeship Levies, and by accessing other funding streams. It will do all the heavy lifting when it comes to onboarding staff bers too, whether to apprenticeships or short vocational courses. When it comes to learner support and engagement, ESP strives to deliver engaging and compelling programmes to every learner. All learners are allocated a trainer to support them throughout, and ESP has Learning Management Systems in place to enable it to report on every aspect of the progress being made. This puts employers at the heart of programme management. There is also a dedicated internal quality system in use to ensure consistent, highquality training is delivered. All training delivery is 100% bespoke, whether clients need to outsource delivery entirely, or are just looking for something to complement their own in-house initiatives. ESP has the skills and expertise that is needed to support both situations. As ESP offers end-to-end solutions, it is able to successfully pivot according to the changing business landscapes it encounters for different businesses and individuals. For example, there has been a significant shift in demand for skills due to a widening skills gap that may be partly a result of economic challenges, or from the COVID-19 pandemic. ESP has positioned itself to address such changes, providing solutions that meet the needs of people who find themselves out of work, at any age, and need to reskill to better equip themselves for new roles. Similarly, for companies that need to reskill existing and new staff to suit a change in structure, ranging from new starts to established companies going through restructures, ESP is there to help meet these challenging market demands. Of course, changing economies and pandemics are not UK specific, and ESP’s courses are relevant to most industry sectors requiring of leadership and project management, project development, customer service, logistics, marketing, social media and more. Its coaching and mentoring to front line staff, and to build team efficiencies is vital. The company reacted quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic by managing to pool its resources, and switch its capabilities online within three days. This meant it was able to continue its support of learners and organisations who were used to face-to-face training within classrooms. The result of this, post pandemic, is that currently ESP is able to offer a hybrid of both online and face-to-face learning resources, either online, within clients’ premises, or in classrooms. It can be wherever its clients’ needs it to be. “We work in partnership with our clients, taking the time to understand the employer’s business aims and objectives and ensuring that their training strategy is aligned with this.” When hiring new staff to join the team at ESP, the company looks for people that bring skills to the table that are of benefit to its stakeholders both internally and externally. It values a cando approach to solving problems, an excellent customer service mindset, and people who aspire to the company values. All the staff at ESP are provided with opportunities to grow their skills. For example, it offers an employee assistance programme which provides free
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