The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities who work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. Each year the council reach over 20 million people face-to-face and more than 500 million people online, via broadcasts and publications. Founded in 1934, the British Council delivers benefit directly to UK individuals and organisations by providing opportunities for international learning and business and creating strong, mutually beneficial, cultural and educational relationships for the UK with people around the world.
Head of Business Training Services
In 2014 The British Council undertook a major transformation in its professional services to meet its ambitious growth targets and ensure they were able to meet the future needs of the organisation. In order to future proof the service, the British Council required an interim Head of Business Training Services (BTS) to develop a new Target Operating Model that defined the scope and funding arrangements for BTS and a corporate Training Strategy for learning and development that would identify a new range of training delivery options.
Following the appointment of a Sirenna Programme Manager as the British Councils Head of Business Training Services in August 2014, Sirenna were commissioned to conduct an end to end review of Business Training Services (BTS) service and develop a new Target Operating Model to meet the changing needs of the business. In order to encourage acceptance and embed the improvements over a twelve month period, the new model identified a range of proposed improvements for each phase of the training cycle:
• Training Strategy that supported the British Councils strategic agenda through clearly defined policies and guidelines
• Balanced Funding Model that aligned Investment Programme funding with Business as Usual allocation
• Planning Process that used a clearly defined, flexible approach to provide the demand forecast of the British Councils training requirements
• Training Needs Analysis to apply a standardised methodology for needs based assessments
• Technical Training Standards to apply a standardised process across the BTS Training teams in the UK, EMEA and India
• Resource Requirements to apply a comprehensive resource planning model to ensure capability and capacity were in place to meet demand
• Training Administration to utilise the corporate Learning Management System
• E-Learning Training Design and development to strengthen courseware development skills
• Training Delivery via CIPD qualifications and secondments
• Evaluation via a standardised methodology to provide data to evaluate the effectiveness of the in house and external training
• Management Information to provide accurate and timely MI to monitor the BTS Training and achievement against plan