Overview

The Barbican is Europe’s largest multi arts and conference venue in the heart of the City of London.

The Need

The Barbican wanted to support the development of a number of its managers but the challenge was to provide a training programme in a format that could be accessed by many different departments with managers performing a variety of roles and with varying shift patterns.

The Solution

In conjunction with Karen Genuardi, HR advisor, we developed and pioneered a bite size approach, running a series of short, sharp workshops each focussing on a specific skill area.

Three 2 hour sessions were run a day, each with highly practical content and each generating clear action plans for the delegates to take away.

This flexible approach meant that Managers could attend all 3 sessions in one day or dip in and out, choosing the priority areas for them. It also allowed managers to focus very specifically on one or two key skills areas, so they felt that the learning and the actions they took from the sessions were manageable and realistic to implement.

The programme was incredibly well attended, with a higher take up rate than had been anticipated and larger numbers of managers participating than previous management courses.

Karen says “This was a really innovative approach to delivering a management development programme. Focal Point really listened to the issues we had and tailored something that worked for us. We were delighted with the attendance and the feedback from managers has been that they found the sessions easily digestible and were able to take one or two things away and make a big difference immediately.”