The Isle of Wight College

Welcome to Business Development Unit (BDU).

The slides on this page illustrate the work we do in the BDU and the wide range of training and expertise we can offer employers.

The BDU provides a wide range of vocational training for employers across the island and on the mainland, including NVQs, accredited short courses and bespoke training packages. The BDU can often access funding to assist employers to up-skill their workforce and are always eager to talk to employers to arrange the most appropriate training to their individual needs and at a time and location that best serves the need of their business.

The Isle of Wight College is committed to providing high standards of service to students, parents, employers and our local community. We aim to provide appropriate and relevant learning of a high quality and to develop positive relationships with employers to ensure we are helping to meet your current and future skill needs.

This dedicated employers' section provides a wide range of information which will be of use to you. Don't worry if don't see what you are looking for, call the dedicated employer helpline 01983 550609 for advice.

See our Employer Charter >>

Not Just Quality Training

We offer the most appropriate training to your needs, at a time and place to suit your business. It is often thought that we only offer training in college during term time - This is not so, we run many work related courses at the college throughout the year but we can also offer our quality training in your place of work and at a time that suits you.

Award Winning Training

OfSTED Inspection Grade 1 Training Quality Standard Matrix Quality Standard

Star Awards Beacon Award

The Business Team

The BDU is the central location and first point of contact for working with employers. BDU staff dedicate their time to working closely with businesses and introducing new courses to help employers develop and maintain their business. The BDU run many general courses including Hospitality, Health & Social Care, Leisure & Tourism, IT, Business & Management and Construction sectors along with Health & Safety and First Aid training, but critically, develop courses and training programmes which are bespoke to individual employers' needs. Training can be provided in anything from Retirement Planning to Unvented Hot Water Systems!

Meet The Team

The Customer Liaison Officers

The Customer Liaison Officers in the BDU play the vital role of building relationships with businesses on the island. They identify and assess employers training needs, and adapting training to suit their requirements and source funding wherever possible. Together as a team the BDU is able to provide a consistent and high quality level of service for employers and individuals looking to update or further their training and qualifications.

Meet The CLO's

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Why Train?

Research has shown that businesses that train their employees are more likely to survive than those that don't. In today's global market you are potentially competing against companies all over the world, available 24 hours a day without your customer ever leaving home. To survive in this kind of market your business needs to be polished and professional. Your systems and service have to be outstanding and this is where we can help you.

Read the full article >>

What Training Should You Provide?

In addition to any training required for legal and regulatory purposes there is a wide range of training available for both employers and employees. The most appropriate training for any one organisation depends upon the skills needed to complete any activities and the skills already available within the organisation. Training needs to be tailored to suit individual requirements. Our Customer Liaison Officers (CLOs) can talk through your needs with you and recommend the most effective training for you. They can also help with advice and availability of funding that may be available to cover any training costs for you.

Training for Legal, Regulatory and General Good Practice Purposes

This can be broken into two areas, requirements for all organisations and requirements for specific sectors and industries. General requirements include Health and Safety Law as well as financial reporting, tax and VAT requirements.

Health and Safety Law www.hse.gov.uk says that :

• Employees must be trained and clearly instructed in their duties;
• Employers and host companies must ensure contractors are properly trained to work safely

Recommended / Regulatory training and Useful Links:

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What we provide for the Island's Workforce

The Isle of Wight College Business Development Unit has developed an excellent reputation for working with employers through offering high quality training focused on the needs of local employers.

Train to Gain

Train to Gain is a government funded scheme designed to up-skill the adult workforce by providing funding for NVQ based training.

Train to Gain further information

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships can make your organisation more effective, productive and competitive by addressing your skills gaps directly. They are designed to help your employees reach a high level of competency and performance.

Apprenticeships - Further Information

Bespoke Training

Employers are increasingly finding that training tailored to their specific needs is the most effective way of up-skilling their workforce. This could be training on particular machinery in the workshop or Microsoft Office software, Customer Service training based on the needs of a specific business or food safety training for a group of people. If you think bespoke training can help your business - just ask.

Funding for Training

We have access to a wide variety of sources to fund training for people over 18. We can offer Apprenticeship or Train to Gain funding for vocational training delivered and assessed mainly in the workplace.

Train to Gain funding and Essential Skills Support Unit (ESSU) can also assist with Literacy, Numeracy and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) needs. Projects currently being worked on, utilizing this funding, include Leadership and Management courses and numerous training and support packages tailored for individuals under threat of redundancy or who have been made redundant.

There are other avenues of funding we can access (i.e. Bursaries) and the funding available is subject to change so we would always recommend enquiring about the training you are interested in to see if there are any ways in which we can help, please call 01983 550609 for the latest information.

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Partnerships and Organisations we work with:

We work with a wide range of organizations and employers to investigate, plan and develop appropriate training to match the needs of businesses on the Island. These developments illustrated in our regular BusinessPlus newsletter. Our newsletter can downloaded from the links below.

BusinessPlus Newsletter Summer 09 BusinessPlus Newsletter Autumn 08

BusinessPlus Newsletter Summer 08

Some of the organizations are listed below, click on the title to view further details.

We welcome feedback from employers at any time, we also have a formal process of quality assurance and course evaluation as explained below.

Quality Assurance

We aim to provide excellent training along with a courteous and efficient service. To make sure this is happening to a level of satisfaction our customers are happy with, we carry out extensive customer satisfaction research.

We evaluate all training from the view of each candidate and we ask you as the employer, to comment on the quality of the training and value it has on your organization. It is important to us that we are providing the most suitable and effective training in a friendly and efficient manner. If you have received a questionaire from us, we would appreciate your completing and returning it.

Course Evaluation

As part of our constant strive to maintain our high levels of customer satisfaction we ask all candidates attending our short courses to complete a questionnaire and let us know their views.

We also survey employers who use our services, to make sure that we are providing the most appropriate training to suit their business needs. In addition to our internal survey, we commision an external company who survey a selection of business that use our services. The result of this are are compared to national benchmarks and used to help define our future training strategy.

Case Studies

We supply outstanding training services across the Island. Please click a case study to view further details.

Berry Electrical The Bayhouse Hotel Wightlink Hose Rhodes and Dickson UKSA

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To book any course, call the Employer Helpline on 01983 550 609 or email us on businessplus@iwcollege.ac.uk alternatively we can arrange for a Customer Liaison Officer to meet with you, Click a sector to view courses available

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