WEST MIDLANDS BUSINESS LEADERS BENEFIT FROM NEW COURSE
The Department for Business and Trade has found that over 300 business leaders from across the West Midlands have completed the 12 week Help to Grow: Management Course in a bid to strengthen resilience and innovation.
Since April 2021, this course has set out to help business leaders and senior managers to increase resilience, innovation, and growth within their organisations.
In early 2023, 280 SME leaders in the West Midlands had finished the course across three business schools at Aston University, Birmingham City University and Coventry University. Throughout the UK, 3,340 people had completed the course across 52 UK business schools.
Delivered by Small Business Charter-accredited business schools, the course is available in more than 50 locations across the UK with 90% of the fee participants pay covered by the Government. The value of the programme continues long after participants have finished the course with the majority continuing to interact with other SME leaders outside their firm through networking and informal discussions.
Research2, undertaken by Ipsos, highlights the impact Help to Grow: Management has had on UK businesses. It found that 69% report greater confidence in leading and managing their business while 66% felt their leadership and management skills had improved.
Michael Hayman, chair of Small Business Charter, said: “The success of the UK’s SME sector is critical to the growth of the wider economy. The Help to Grow: Management Course is designed to directly benefit our vibrant SME sector, equipping today’s leaders and future leaders with the tools, knowledge and confidence to identify and lead change, innovation and growth. It’s also brilliant to see the course attracting a wider diversity of business leaders, something we want to continue embracing as the programme progresses.
We look forward to continuing to support business leaders across the West Midlands and the rest of the UK as they take the steps needed to introduce change that will help them for years to come.”
SME leaders across a variety of sectors have benefitted from taking part in the training including those in manufacturing, construction, professional services, scientific, and technical industries, and information and communication. Help to Grow: Management comprises four waves of three modules, 1-2-1 business mentoring, peer-learning and access to the Alumni Network.
Encouragingly, six in 10 (61%) UK business leaders now have a better understanding of how to innovate their business model and are more aware of factors that drive business productivity and growth. Over nine in 10 (92%) say they have shared what they learned or gained with others in their business after completing the programme.
The advice given to help business leaders embrace working in a post-covid era also resulted in almost four in five (78%) reporting improved employee engagement.
Help to Grow: Management has supported leaders from often under-represented demographics. An estimated 17% of participants identified as being from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared to 6% of all UK SME owners, while 34% were women, compared to 24% of UK SME owners. A broad range of ages were also welcomed to the course with one in five aged between 50 & 65 while a quarter aged between 25 & 34.
Report findings3 also showed that 91% of participants would recommend Help to Grow: Management to other business leaders. Manny Rai (pictured above), founder of Cheylesmore Chartered Accountant would likely be among those to recommend the course
He describes his experience saying: “The course really helped me with my leadership. It made me realise that I’m supposed to be the captain of the ship, directing which way it should go, and finding new and better ways of getting there.
I used to try and do all the work myself, but that just doesn’t work. You get lost and lose focus. I was also able to implement learnings from the employee engagement module which really helped to support my team through a period of really rapid growth. We could not have changed the company structure like we did if we hadn’t invested time in our people.”
