Web tool to help voluntary sector use Investors in People framework
Howard Lake | 31 August 2003 | News
More than 50,000 businesses and 100,000 employees in the voluntary sector across Scotland are set to benefit from a Web tool which will help improve business performance using the Investors in People (IIP) framework.
The Web tool will provide a high quality online IIP resource relevant to the needs of the individual organisations and increase access to IIP in the voluntary sector. The tool is being developed by Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothian and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO).
SE Edinburgh and Lothian hopes to see ten first time recognitions in the voluntary sector within the first year, rising to 50 recognitions by year three of the online tool.
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SE Edinburgh and Lothian’s partnership approach is based on SCVO’s knowledge of the sector and its challenges, and their remit to improve the performance of the sector, together with SE Edinburgh and Lothian’s remit to improve business performance in a managed way through promoting and supporting organisations to achieve IIP.
Planning for training is only gradually taking root in businesses. While 60% of businesses have business plans, only 39% have training plans.
Veronica Lynch, of SE Edinburgh and Lothian, said: “Research clearly demonstrates the limited extent to which training and skills issues are integrated into the business planning process.
“Our IIP intervention aims to address this by supporting companies and organisations to introduce quality business processes, and identify and manage skills needs in a strategic way.”
Celia Carson, SCVO’s Learning Team Manager, said: “A recent survey of the skills needs of the voluntary sector across the UK, showed that participation by the voluntary sector in Investors in People has doubled since the last survey done in 2000. In Scotland, our work with individual local enterprise companies using The Big Picture as a support tool for achieving IIP has seen very encouraging results. An estimated 50 organisations committed to IIP and 25 gained the standard across Scotland during 2002.
“The survey showed that there is a growing awareness in the sector of the need to address organisational and individual effectiveness and we hope that the Putting PEOPLE in the Picture Web site, available on SCVO’s Learning Team Web pages will assist voluntary organisations across Scotland in taking a strategic approach to identify individual and organisational learning needs, contributing to the development of our most valuable resource.”
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.