“Training is something you do to someone, it’s imposed. Even within the environmental industries it is still looked on a cost cutter, one of the choppable bits.
“But I have a personal thing about the value for the individual of making the most of learning opportunities. I’m an ordinary working class bloke, the son of a dock labourer, who had the opportunity to go to a grammar school. I have been very lucky and I have seen the other side of the coin too, where people get stuck.
“This all started with the Wildlife Trust in the 1980s when I created a training budget for staff and started enjoying the results, especially the satisfaction of individuals awarded a certificate, even if it was one we generated ourselves for, say, dry stone walling. This was obviously a good route.
“From that I became more involved in the skills agenda and development for the Trust, including significant funding for management development – so I did an NVQ Level 5 in Management. I must have been one of the first Level 5 managers and my colleagues did a variety of NVQs.
“Then we started working towards Investors in People which we achieved in 1995. That was probably the single biggest boost to our organisation. I think measuring ourselves against an external standard and being seen to be good enough to meet the criteria was great.
“What became obvious was that this was wider than training, it brought to light the need for better internal communications, better internal engagement with people, who were not clear about all they needed to know. We had crossed the threshold of turning into an SME. We put in a training and development plan and an appraisal system which was hugely well received, a boost for morale and performance.
“At that time we had 12 staff, now there are around 40 full and part time, plus some 300 volunteers. We don’t only have IIP still, we measure ourselves against Profile, which is part of the IIP kit, allowing you to set a target for standards. We have achieved Level 2 out of four and are looking to go higher. We have drawn up our own internal leadership charter and we have an external consultant working with us on that.
“We want to continue to use strategic human resources as a development route to get the best out of our staff. And we try to treat our volunteers in the same way we treat staff. We are getting the benefits back from investing in talented individuals. We still have some of those original 12 staff and some volunteers have become managers.
"Development is about self fulfilment, you can see people flowering when they know ‘I can do that’, and it gives me a real kick seeing that happen."
“We spend about £1.8 million a year, half on salaries so obviously you need to get the best out of people. There aren’t enough around with the skills we need - self starters, good communicators, who manage their time well and have good interpersonal skills.
Within the Wildlife Trusts we are the best, and I don’t say that in any arrogant way. At a strategic level we have adopted the principle of skill and staff development and I’m working with a small group on how we do that. There is a growing understanding of how important the skills issue is going to be in the longer term.
"For the future the Trust will also be trying to have a more intensive relationship with volunteers. We use VIVA - the Volunteer Investment and Value Audit - to establish the ratio of time we spend on volunteers and what we get back. That’s pretty healthy at 4:1.
We have seen volunteers do really well through shadowing and mentoring as well as ‘training’. This is also a route for a career change. And the benefits of all this have a knock on effect. Our culture is very open. Every month we have a staff meeting which volunteers can attend and there are presentations by all sorts of people.
"Skills development is so ingrained in the Trust now, it’s not dependent on me to drive this, it’s the way we all work. We routinely put it into all our projects. Training, if you call it that, is a way to get best value for money, it’s not a cost. If you have a vision and strategic objectives and you are an organisation that can only achieve those through people, you have to have the best people to be successful.”
