Oxford Catalysts - Developing staff and saving money

Oxford Catalysts have a statement on their website ‘Our success is built on the quality of our people’ and they are clearly demonstrating this by making sure people are technically fully skilled but also by developing their business and personal skills.

The team is a multinational one and Oxford Catalysts want to boost their colleague’s confidence, business awareness and leadership skills and remain competitive. Not training people can be an expensive business because of the risks of losing qualified staff, not negotiating effectively or communicating well with customers; so investment was necessary to ensure the company kept growing and kept their valuable staff and clients. But training can be an expensive business; as well as the obvious cost of training courses there are additional hidden costs like time out of work, travel, accommodation and sometimes going on training that doesn’t understand your sector’s needs.So Clive Telford, R&D Director, who is responsible for the Technical team, looked for something that would suit their needs and found that there was a solution very nearby.

Oxford Catalysts save time and money by sending their staff to Skills2Grow workshops which are specifically aimed at the science and technology community and are based locally on Milton Park. Out of a staff of only 20, so far, 12 people have been trained in Persuasion, Negotiation skills, Confident Communication, Practical Presentations and Managing People, Time and Pressure and more are booked for Creative Thinking in October 2011. Clive Telford told us it was a very cost effective way of enhancing business performance. The workshops are ‘convenient, we don’t have to spend any money on travel or accommodation and people are quickly back at work with the skills we need them to have. People are also followed up for 3 months after the training days with additional information and help so they felt it was easier to break old habits and continue using their new skills.’ ‘Having employees attend different courses from the same provider means that they have a common language and appreciation of the softer issues’ Clive added.

One of the key advantages is you don’t need to wait until you’ve got enough people to have a training course internally because you can send one or more people along to the Skills2Grow workshops whenever they are running. Or make block bookings which save you even more money. Skills2Grow are part of the Milton Park Innovation Centre ‘Preferred Supplier Scheme’ so all members are eligible for a discount on every workshop. There are also lots of free resources to get you started at www.skills2grow.co.uk and full details of workshops.