The mainstream skills charity and ever-growing employer movement, The 5% Club continues to expand its offering and – with support from The ERA Foundation and Grant Thornton UK LLP – has now introduced an exciting new range of employer support, centred on a novel, new and extremely cost-effective Consultancy Service .
Building on its core purpose and aimed at helping employers large and small take “Insight into Action”, the service will:
- Optimise employers’ workplace learning offerings building on existing Apprenticeships, Graduate Schemes and Sponsored Students intakes.
- Enhance employer branding to retain existing staff and attract new talent.
- Assist with planning to deliver socially impactful improvements, whilst optimising the business return on investment.
- Create a strategy and approach to drive forward a tangible demonstration of social value, to help in winning new business.
All the above with a focus on The 5% Club mission to inspire employer to deliver increased, inclusive, and accessible provision of Apprenticeships, Graduate Schemes and Sponsored Students (including T-Level work placements).
The 5% Club Consultancy Service
Building on the successful launch (in 2021) and growth of the Employer Audit, The 5% Club has taken the significant next step with the new Consultancy Service which will guide accredited members to deliver further increases to their workplace learning offering, and to make those offerings more socially impactful, inclusive, and accessible to all, irrespective of social background, personal characteristics, or individual circumstance.
Targeted at those accredited members who have completed the Employer Audit, the approach will be centred on the benchmarking report(s) with an approach helping employers unlock future success, be that membership progression, or in identifying comparative areas for further optimisation. The Consultancy Service have been designed to be easily and readily accessed, and will support employers in:
- Understanding fully the Employer Audit benchmarking report.
- Drawing insights from these reports, especially in the benchmarking comparisons with other participants of equivalent size and sector.
- Creating an action plan to support the refinement of an employers’ workplace learning strategy and forward plans.
The Approach
Employers clearly relish the award of accredited memberships of The 5% Club – Bronze to Platinum all valued in equal measure, and they have become an important outward and visible sign of commitment to increased, inclusive and accessible workplace learning for all. And this is increasingly used to highlight employer commitment to social value and societal change, and to engage the workforce of today and tomorrow through strong employer branding.
As with the Employer Audit, the approach is simple.
Complete the Audit. Draw Insight. Action Plan. Deliver Change.
The Offering
From inception, employers have completed the Employer Audit on an individual basis, coming together for the annual symposium and celebration event – a terrific opportunity to network and discuss findings with other employers and skills sector experts.
But there are other approaches, centred on the convening power and influence of regional and combined authorities, and the gravitas, leadership, and influence of the largest employers over their supply chains.
As such, The 5% Club now offers the following consultancy service schemes:
Individual Employer – working alongside the Employer Audit Scheme, the individual Employer offering enables employers to draw clear insights from their report(s) and turn these into a workable action plan focused on enhancing their workplace learning offering – be that increasing the size of their various schemes, broadening the range of schemes they run, making them more accessible or inclusive, or maximising completions.
More detail is available here.
Gravity Schemes. These novel schemes allow Regional/Combined Authorities and/or Large Employers to visibly influence skills development in their region or supply chain, using their influence and reach to shape positive skills development behaviours and action in groups of employers of their choosing. This positive leadership of these selected and curated employer communities will provide measured improvement and straightforward evidence of delivered social value and societal impact. The Gravity Schemes are:
Gravity (Regional). Based on the success of the scheme developed with the West Midlands Combined Authority, this Gravity Scheme provides regionally funded:
- Participation in a regional Employer Audit for a targeted, selected community of employers.
- Follow-up symposia and consultancy support to that community of employers, to assist them in acting on the findings.
- Subsequent years social impact assessment to ensure desired social outcomes are realised.
More detail is available here.
Gravity (Supply Chain). Similarly, this Gravity Scheme enables Large Employers to invest in their supply chains cost-effectively and visibly, with that injection of funding delivering:
- Participation in an Employer Audit for a targeted, selected community of supply chain employers.
- Follow-up symposia and consultancy support to that community of employers, to assist them in acting on the findings.
- Subsequent years social impact assessment to ensure desired social outcomes are realised.
- A summary report providing tangible evidence of the social impact planned or delivered, which is turn can be used to support an external demonstration of Social Value.
More detail is available here.
Commenting on this new service, Mark Cameron OBE said, “The 5% Club continues to grow year-on-year, and our Employer Audit scheme has expanded rapidly with 230 Employers signed-up this year. The Audit reports are rich in content and insight, and we are excited by this obvious next step, which is to help and support our accredited members take those insights and move them effectively into action, either individually or as part of a Gravity Scheme. We are also extremely grateful for the support from The ERA Foundation and Grant Thornton, which has helped us take the vision and high-level concept into reality”.
Justin Rix, Grant Thornton Partner added, “ As a Gold Member of The 5% Club and associate member of their Business Leadership Council, we are delighted to support the introduction of this novel and exciting new service. Grant Thornton has a long history of providing advisory support to our clients across the employee lifecycle including organisational design, talent attraction and development, and employee engagement, including diversity and inclusion. And we know the application of this experience and expert knowledge will help The 5% Club support their engaged members take “insight into action” through this bold and innovative new scheme”.
Andrew Everett, CEO at The ERA Foundation, concluded, “As a Not for Profit Foundation, we have a long history of supporting the UK’s high tech engineering and manufacturing sector. We are therefore delighted to have supported The 5% Club bring this scheme into being, and look forward to supporting further pilot activity of the Gravity Scheme, in promoting careers and critical skills development across the sector, making a tangible difference and delivering new and young talent into high tech engineering and manufacturing – the lifeblood of the new Mission led Government”.
