Always striving for continuous improvement

At The B2W Group, we are always striving for continuous improvement to benefit our employees, learners, and the organisations that we work with.

Kaizen is an approach to creating continuous improvement. This is the idea that small, ongoing changes can reap major benefits and improvement.

 

Ten Principles of Kaizen

10 principles that address the Kaizen mindset are commonly referenced as core to the philosophy. They are:

  1. Let go of assumptions.
  2. Be proactive about solving problems.
  3. Don’t accept the status quo.
  4. Let go of perfectionism and take an attitude of iterative, adaptive change.
  5. Look for solutions as you find mistakes.
  6. Create an environment in which everyone feels empowered to contribute.
  7. Don’t accept the obvious issue; instead, ask “why” five times to get to the root cause.
  8. Cull information and opinions from multiple people.
  9. Use creativity to find low-cost, small improvements.
  10. Never stop improving.

At The B2W Group, we strive to continuously improve all of our provisions. We would like to highlight recent and continuous changes we have made to The B2W Group that live up to our values.

 

Apprenticeships

To ensure our learners are getting the most out of their digital marketing apprenticeships, we ask them and their employers for feedback regularly through surveys and Skills Coach visits. This allows us to make sure they are getting the most out of their apprenticeship programme and are the centre of everything we do.

Here are just a few of the recent changes that we implemented to improve the programme.

Block Training

Learners raised concerns about attending only one day of training a month, stating it was not effective for retaining knowledge.

The B2W Group changed the off-the-job training to week blocks which has led to 100% pass rates.

 

Facilities

Learners also gave feedback about facilities and learning environment, stating that they need improvement.

The B2W Group provided new classroom space and a breakout room with refreshments.

 

Location

It was also addressed that it would be beneficial to expand on the locations in which we offer apprenticeships.

We opened a training centre in Rotherham to offer apprenticeships to people in South Yorkshire.

 

Staff Development & Improvements

It’s important to invest in your staff and support them in their training and development. The vast majority of people want their employers to offer more training courses, according to a survey of over 2,500 people by jobs websiteTotaljobs.

Employee development is tracked through 1-2-1s and CPDs (Continuing Professional Development). We also train employees on Safeguarding and Prevent and Equality and Diversity as a standard.

Many of our employees are also upskilled through distance learning and apprenticeship courses. This includes IT and Digital Marketing, allowing them to implement their knowledge in their role and stay ahead of changes in technology and practices.

 

Safeguarding

Over the past year, The B2W Group recognised that there were areas for improvement for our Safeguarding procedures. Our Safeguarding team have worked hard to ensure that policies are thorough and up-to-date and that we have confidential ways for our learners and staff to contact us with a safeguarding concern.

We have created a new page on our website which includes all of the relevant information, including useful information and contacts for learners, staff and website visitors. This can be found here.

We have even implemented this into our new phone app for our digital marketing apprentices, so they can quickly report a safeguarding concern if they aren’t comfortable with contacting us over the phone to begin with.

Our staff all undergo Safeguarding and Prevent training annually to ensure they are up-to-date and have the right knowledge of the topics.

In our recent Ofsted report, we were given great feedback regarding Safeguarding:

“Leaders and managers give a high priority to safeguarding apprentices and learners. They have a comprehensive range of safeguarding and safeguarding-related policies and procedures. Leaders and managers update these regularly and apply them appropriately.”

 

Want to know more about our visions and values? Visit here.


About the author