Our client: The Challenge, a national social integration charity, working with the UK’s Department for Education
Duration: 4 months (April–July 2018)
Our end customer: UK students aged 16-23 following the soon to be introduced technical education courses (“T Levels”)

Creating an ecosystem to build a highly skilled technical workforce in the UK

The Government is reforming technical education to address skills
shortages in UK industry and to help young people enter the jobmarket. Among these reforms is a new 45+ working day industry placement that will be compulsory for all students taking T Levels.  

The Department for Education commissioned The Challenge to create a comprehensive package of expert guidance, tools and templates to help colleges, employers and students to deliver/participate in these new placements. These resources needed to draw on lessons from the pilot placement programme that The Challenge had delivered in 2017/18.

The Challenge required additional capacity to deliver these within a short timeframe as well as specialist skills in facilitation, writing and design.

Targeted and engaging resources to make industry placements simple for everyone

The Impact Collective provided a team with combined expertise in strategy, marketing and communications. Our experts:

• facilitated a series of workshops with the 21 education providers, project managers and business development teams who had completed the pilot to draw out lessons learned and map out what resources were needed to roll out industry placements more widely
• planned and produced over 25 user-centric resources. Formats included: guidance booklets, presentations, template emails and letters, model agreements, timelines, flowcharts, social media campaigns, promotional marketing materials and videos
• consistently checked content and usability with target audiences, including 16-year old students, and managed / integrated multiple rounds of feedback from key stakeholders, government and sector bodies

By 2022, 250,000 young people nationwide will have the opportunity to get real-world work experience in a field related to their area of study

Having completed the project, all resources were approved by the Department for Education and were published online by July 2018, allowing 420 education providers to begin implementing industry placements that autumn.

Our superheroes:

Nadia Laabs

Francesca Pileggi

Anna Patton

Georgina Bremridge

Bex Dawkes (external collaborator)

Get in touch to find out how we can supercharge your impact

The project: “Social Impact through Procurement” – supporting Johnson and Johnson to bring social enterprises into its supply chain

This project supported Johnson and Johnson UK to scope out and initiate a strategic programme of engagement with social enterprise suppliers. Initial stages involved facilitating discussions around long-term goals and securing endorsements from members of Johnson & Johnson’s senior leadership. An all-day launch workshop raised the programme’s visibility among procurement leaders and provided the opportunity to tackle difficult questions head on and plan short-term and long-term programme activities. A Meet The Supplier session introduced procurement leaders to representatives of social enterprise suppliers. Visits to Johnson & Johnson’s major UK sites kept up momentum and encouraged follow-up on ideas raised at the launch workshop.

The impact: a number of quick-win buyer-supplier relationships were implemented and served as case studies and inspiration for deeper, ongoing social enterprise engagement. Since the completion of this early-stage project, Johnson & Johnson has successfully embedded the programme and has become a leader in social value procurement, inspiring other large companies to take similar action.

The project: “Active Moves” – developing a community-based exercise initiative to keep older people fit and healthy while combatting loneliness and isolation

Royal Voluntary Service is a volunteer organisation that enriches the lives of older people and their families across Britain.  The Active Moves initiative aims to improve the wellbeing of frail, older people by encouraging active ageing among the elderly.

Leading this project involved collaborating and forging partnerships with multiple stakeholders – including award-winning social enterprise Move It or Lose It! – and getting buy-in from local hubs and communities. It included developing the strategy, designing the business model and operational framework through workshops and dialogues with both internal and external stakeholders, and setting up the pilot in four locations.  A measurement framework was developed and key outcomes and metrics identified to determine impact.

The Impact: Six months into the pilot, initial findings show Active Moves having positive impact on older people.  Participants of the pilot show considerable improvement in three of the four measures collected and that there appears to be an association between improvements in physical function and wellbeing/loneliness scores.  Given these results, Royal Voluntary Service are looking to scale up this programme and develop this as part of their core service offer to both older people and health providers – e.g. Trusts, CCGs, and Falls Teams.

The project: “Leadership of the Future” – mobilising Marks and Spencer’s food suppliers to take action on sustainability.

Based in the Foods Plan A team, this project included the design and project management of a strategic future trends event, working closely with senior leaders in the food business. To support content development, a series of sustainability films were produced, covering themes including the future of the food industry and the changing social landscape. A Plan A Awards process recognising sustainability leadership from within the supply base was delivered with over 50 suppliers applying, and the 6 winners announced at the event.

Impact: Over 500 guests attended ‘Leadership of the Future’, representing more than 200 of Marks and Spencer’s most valued food suppliers. Evaluation found that 96% of suppliers came away ‘inspired’ and with a clear understanding of what action they need to take on sustainability. Marks and Spencer is rolling out the event content to its global supply base.

The project: “Change Adoption Project” – Global adoption of a new HR software (Salesforce) for VSO.

After a year of implementation, the new HR software was being sparsely used in VSO’s offices globally and therefore not allowing upper management to have an accurate overview of the company’s performance. The project took into consideration the offices’ previous modes of working and understanding what was causing the resistance to adoption. Working with all levels of stakeholders and liaising between HR and IT, a project plan was developed to get everyone on board. The project included in-country training, 1-on-1 support, creating effective training material online, IT development and upgrades, and getting upper management to support and monitor the progress of adoption.

Impact: Within 6 months, the global adoption of Salesforce led to the creation of reports and dashboards which provided insight for M&E purposes and helped determine more accurate supply/demand information of volunteers and employees in each region. It allowed employees to do their work more efficiently and effectively by using tools that made their jobs easier and be more aligned to the organisation’s mission and goals.

“I love Salesforce too! So much better than we had before and it’s shared with all members of the organisation! Could not ask for more!” – Sophie Paradis, HR, VSO

The Project: Raising start-up capabilities and becoming investment ready

Dream Learners Ltd. is a start-up that produces animated early childhood education videos based on the UK school curriculum that has raised both an Angel round and Seed investment and is currently pitching for a Series-A investment round. Working with this client meant supporting them from early stage development to investment readiness and all which this process entails: Designing their business model, developing their route-to-market strategy, constructing their business plan, building their financial model and pitch deck and their MVP development as well as collecting and analysing early-stage customer feedback.

Impact: This work supported Dream Learner’s second Seed investment raise with the Founders Factory in London and has helped them bring their app to life which is now available for sale on the Apple store. With a clear strategy and plan the team is now free to execute on growing their business and expanding their product offering to increase customer acquisition and work their way to a successful Series-A raise.

The project:  Developing outcomes based commissioning for children and young people’s mental health in Tower Hamlets

The project involved working with a range of stakeholders, including the Clinical Commissioning Group, Local Authority, Public Health, Mental Health Trust and voluntary sector, to change the way in which mental health services are commissioned from a traditional activity based contract to one which is focused on outcomes identified by the local population as important to them.  The support consisted of three phases.  Firstly, an engagement phase to co-produce the outcomes with the children and young people and stakeholders using a logic model approach to structure thinking.  Secondly, a scoping phase to analyse the local provider landscape using a lean methodology approach.  Finally, a development phase to design the measurement framework, contract model and whole system approach to support the outcomes.  This project is now moving into an implementation phase where the outcomes and measurement system will be piloted.

The impact:  Once the contracts go live, this will bring together a range of stakeholders to deliver children and young people’s mental health services in a more integrated way ensuring they all working towards outcomes that matter to their population.  A monitoring and evaluation system will be established to monitor progress towards this.