Profile Solutions Blog

NWDA Launches Second Phase of Business Mentoring Programme

From today small businesses across the Northwest can benefit from free group mentoring to help improve their business performance, as the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) launches the second phase of its Business Mentoring programme.

Designed to help leaders and senior managers of small businesses to develop their leadership and management skills, group mentoring will be delivered across the region by a network of highly experienced mentors.  It will enable a group of up to eight clients to meet monthly over a six to nine month period in order to mentor each other by exchanging ideas, experiences and learning with the support of a trained mentor. 

Topics covered during the sessions will include leadership development, competency development, creative techniques and a tailor-made ‘role model’ session with a successful business leader or entrepreneur.

The sessions will help group members to improve their business performance through addressing issues currently facing them within a peer mentoring environment and to share their good business practice and techniques, together with their approaches to effective leadership.

Free of charge, group mentoring is aimed at leaders and senior managers of small and micro businesses that have been trading for more than a year, with an annual turnover of less than £500,000 and up to 10 employees.

NWDA Chief Executive, Steven Broomhead, comments:

“We’re looking to develop the next generation of leaders in the region and our quality Business Mentoring programme will help to nurture, guide and develop talent in small businesses across England’s Northwest.

“We’ve had a tremendous response to one-to-one mentoring since the programme was launched last year and group mentoring will give leaders and senior managers of small businesses who might not yet be ready for one-to-one support to receive invaluable help.  Group members will collectively support each other, whilst developing and creating innovative ideas in a facilitated environment, so maximising the effectiveness of this mode of delivery in the region.”

The NWDA introduced its Business Mentoring programme in September 2009 with the aim of establishing 3,000 quality mentoring relationships over a three-year period. In addition to the newly launched group mentoring, one to one mentoring is also available, with e-mentoring scheduled to follow later on this year.  Part of the Government’s ‘Solutions for Business’ portfolio, the scheme is the largest of its kind dedicated specifically to meeting the needs of small businesses in the region and will deliver high quality mentoring in accordance with a regional quality framework.  A number of specialist providers from across the Northwest are responsible for delivering the programme.

Business leaders and senior managers wishing to apply for group mentoring should contact Business Link Northwest on 0845 00 66 888 or at www.businesslinknw.co.uk/mentoring

Profile Solutions are proud to be delivering this programme for Businesses based in Cheshire. If you need to know any more information, you can also email us direct at mentoring@profilesolutions.co.uk.

Businesses with over 5 employees in the North West, can still benefit from the NWDA funding for coaching / training to a value of £1,000 per person.

Although worth noting that the funding structure was changed at the end of December 2009, for future review at the end of Q1/2010. Currently only one person per business (typically the Owner / Director / Senior Manager) can access the first level of funding. Which still allows these people to gain the full £1,000 for training or business coaching / mentoring.

This is based on the first £500 of the training being fully funded, then the next £1,000 of spend being match funded (50%).

For example, training or coaching programme costing £1,000, could be funded by £750 via NWDA and £250 by the Business.

Or a £1,500 programme could be funded by £1,000 via NWDA and £500 by the Business.

As a general rule of thumb you will need to have over 5 employees and based in the North West (Chester and Ellesmere Port eligible postcodes are CH1, CH2, CH3, CH4, CH64, CH65, CH66) and not accessed this funding to date.

When you are reviewing your training in 2010, it is highly recommended you look into this as an option to support your personal, senior management team and business growth.

We are hoping in April 2010, this offer will be extended for Businesses who have accessed this first stage funding for additional 5-6 employees in the same business to be eligible for this funding. So worth getting the process of accessing the funding in progress sooner rather than later.

Remember that this funding can also be used for Coaching in your business (maybe for development of business plans, sales or leadership development) and Higher Education (on a match funding bases only).

If you want to discuss how Profile Solutions can support in delivery of your training or business coaching needs, as well as accessing the funding in areas such as Leadership Development, Interpersonal Development, Change Management, Customer Excellence or PRINCE2®, please give me a call direct on 07977 090 767 or the office on 0845 838 6748.

Warm regards, Steve

For more information on Profile Solutions Limited, click here.

I remember running one workshop where within a group of employees one lady in the group said she had never run a project. At that point I noticed the wedding ring on her finger. After confirming that she was indeed married, I asked “Who arranged the Wedding?”, she soon confirmed she did, and in her words “Wouldn’t trust her Husband to do that!”. When asking further about the day, she also confirmed, that she had a budget (which she kept to), time schedule (to the minute on the day!), risk management (seating of families), specification (dresses, flowers, cake, etc), communication process for stakeholders (venues, suppliers, friends and families) and even risk management (pilot for the day with a rehearsal and pack-up on the catering).

Needless to say, she then realised she has indeed run a very successful project, all be it without the framework we then outlined in the workshop.

This is just a real life example of when Project Management skills are called on. Project Management skills are fundamental if you are involved in any level of management and essential if you run a business.

The ability to run business changes, new initiatives, promotions, events, capital expenditure, business proposals, etc; all involve change and need to be managed correctly in the core areas of Project Management:

• Time – What are the key milestones and dates that need to be met? How long is the project to run for? How and when do we have reviews?
• Cost – Is there a budget for this project? Do we have the funding? Are there contingencies if costs increase? Have we got the required resource for success?
• Specification – What do we want to achieve? What does success look like? How are we going to monitor the outcomes?
  
• Risk – What are the possible risks? How are we going to deal with these if they arise? How will we pilot the project?
• Communications – Who are the key stakeholders? How are they going to be updated?

This is just a short list of the areas, which will need considering on a successful change programme.

If you want to review your approach to Project and Change Management in your business please use our FREE Project Management Health Check, then call us on 0845 838 6748, if you need support or employee training on your change programmes.

Profile Solutions are based in Chester and specialise in supporting Businesses in Project and Change Management from SME’s & start-ups (creating a business strategy for success), to larger organisations by deploying bespoke Project Management Frameworks and documentation for delivering Business Objectives. Remember you may also be eligible for some funding towards training, please click here for more details.

See our online brochure for more details.

To get in contact and find out more, please email Steve Nicholls on steve@profilesolutions.co.uk or call us on 0845 838 6748.

The Project Management Health Check is an efficient method of reviewing your organisations capability of managing change.

Maybe these are familiar in your business:

• Projects not delivering expected results (over budget, late or out of scope)
• No transparency over the changes in the organisation
• Lack of communication and ownership for projects
• Projects not aligned to business objectives or reviewed if still relevant to now
• Key resources are pulled across too many projects

It is just as important to have Project Management best practices in place for smaller businesses as it is for larger organisations, as the principles are much the same.

Take 10 minutes today and have a run through this FREE
Project Management Health Check and see the results on the radar diagram. Simply score each of the statements between -4 (do not agree/don’t do) to 4 (total agree/used on all projects).

Profile Solutions specialise in supporting Businesses in Project and Change Management from SME & start-ups (creating a business strategy for success), to larger organisations where we deploy bespoke Project Management Frameworks for delivering Business Objectives.

See our online brochure for more details.

If you need any more information, please call us on 0845 838 6748 or email info@profilesolutions.co.uk

With my thebestofchester hat on for the evening of Friday 18^th Sept, with my business partner Paul Daniels, and Cheshire Jets Basket Ball team, we were very pleased to support Claire House for their 10^th Birthday Party at Chester Racecourse. With some great celebrity entertainment from Mark Monaghan and Nicky Campbell.

Well done to Abi, Paul, Pete and Jess for pulling together a fantastic night. Here we raised an amazing £11,130 for Claire House, with over 350 guests at the black tie event. Well done again to all that helped and attended.

Main image below from left myself Steve Nicholls from thebestofchester, Abi Smith from Claire House, Paul Daniels from thebestofchester, Jess Forbes from Cheshire Jets and Peter Hawkins from Cheshire Jets (all escorted by 2 Romans!)

Please note all images kindly supplied by Jason Howard Photography