Blending the Boundaries

Natural England is an Executive Non-departmental Public Body responsible to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. With 2,350 employees based across England, the organisation's purpose is to protect and improve England's natural environment and encourage people to enjoy and get involved in their surroundings.

Back in 5th Edition, ILX Group (ILX) won an invitation to tender for the supply of PPM training and consultancy to Natural England as they planned to improve the effectiveness and consistency of their programme and project management across the organisation. Originally, the majority of the training sought under this partnership saw ILX's expert consultants lead traditional classroom workshops to upskill the PPM teams, but in August 2012 the organisation found themselves moving to a more flexible, principles-based approach. As a result, the newly-formed performance programmes team needed to shake up the training for this area of work.

THE SOLUTION

The performance programmes team decided to move to a blended-learning method upon ILX's recommendation. "ILX Group's senior PPM consultant recommended we consider a blended learning approach taking the form of digital learning followed by classroom training and helped us to develop and deliver the workshop sessions," commented Dave White, team leader for Natural England's performance programmes team.

"This ensured that our learning was tailored to the Natural England approach whilst offering the best value return."

As ILX are the preferred contact for the supply of PPM training at Natural England, it was natural that the performance programmes team would approach ILX again with their requirement for this new round of learning targeted individuals who were already involved in Natural England's programmes and projects, and those that had identified PPM as a priority development need.

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