Ambassadors - South West
We've had another very good year and a special thank you from me and everyone at National Training Awards. The good news is that numbers are up on last year with a 6% increase UK wide. We have had 44 entries in the South West and hoping that we can build on the success of last year with 3 outright Winners of the Year from the region.
The team in London have worked incredibly hard and it is a great credit to everyone involved that we have done so well nationally despite the economic climate. Now the real work begins as the Assessors all start to score the entries and then it will be the Judges who work hard in June and July to make the final decisions. I hope you will be able to come to the Regional Ceremony in the autumn; it would be great to see you there to celebrate our new clutch of winners.
A special thank you to all the regional sponsors, Ambassadors and stakeholders who featured NTA in many of their newsletters up and down the region this year. I am sure that will have had a very positive effect in keeping our name and the Awards in the forefront of people's minds. Although the majority of this year's Ambassador activity has now come to a close, it will resume again in the autumn in readiness for next year's competition.
If you are in touch with potential entrants or identify anyone who has a scheme worthy of entry at any time, please keep talking to them about NTA! It helps to do this what ever the time of year, as some entrants even now say that they considered entering for a couple of years before they did anything, so we mustn't assume that speaking to someone only once will be successful, we need to keep mentioning it.
Thanks.
NTA Regional Award Winner, Large
Employer;
Land Registry
Training Managers to Lead Through
Change
Land Registry managers are better equipped to lead staff through a time of change following major investment in their development.
The 7,000 strong executive agency and trading fund is a state monopoly with a statutory service to register land. Its mission is "to provide the world's best service for securely registering ownership of land and facilitating property transactions." Its trading fund status is continually reviewed by the Government and Land Registry must improve its performance continually. Traditionally performance was measured through the success of initiatives to streamline processes and introduce technological advance. However, the changes that came with such advances brought additional challenges for managers.
Land Registry had a historical tendency to make management development less of a priority than other business needs and as a result, managers were unskilled to lead in this changing environment. Staff surveys reflected a lack of manager support and failings in the management of poor performers, while an increased number of grievances were taken to a senior level. At the same time, employment legislation was growing more complex, and there was an increasingly litigious culture.
In September 2007, the Directing Board recognised there was an urgent need to take action ahead of a major organisational change to centralise the agency's HR function. Training was needed that would enable managers to develop a base line level of knowledge and skills, take appropriate responsibility, be consistent, follow and share best practice and build manager communities. That training would be best achieved if the 1,100 managers took part in two two-day core training workshops, forming the basis of the Developing Management Capability (DMC) programme.
