Skills-Funding-Agency
5
OFFICIAL 1 OFFICIAL The Skills Funding Agency Communications Capability Review Management Summary
-
Upload
emma-leech -
Category
Documents
-
view
19 -
download
1
Transcript of Skills-Funding-Agency
OFFICIAL
1
OFFICIAL
The Skills Funding Agency
Communications Capability Review
Management Summary
OFFICIAL
2
OFFICIAL
1. Management Summary
About the review 1.1 The Communication Capability Review of the Skills Funding Agency is one of a series of reviews
across Whitehall departments, Arm’s Length Bodies and agencies. The review fieldwork took place in January 2015.
1.2 Communication is a pan-‐organisational responsibility and this review’s scope covered the breadth of SFA communications, including but not limited to the teams managed by the Deputy Director for the Chief Executive’s Office (Communications, Media and Public Affairs and Marketing).
Organisational context 1.3 The SFA is England’s main funder of further education (FE), supporting over 1,000 colleges,
private training organisations and employers with £4 billion of funding each year. The SFA delivers two major customer-‐facing services: the National Apprentice Service (NAS), which is responsible for increasing the number of traineeship and apprenticeship opportunities, and the National Careers Service (NCS), which provides career information and advice.
Role for communications 1.4 Communications and marketing has a business critical role to play in SFA’s business. Not only is it
learner-‐facing, it also has an important role in securing provision of training and supporting the statutory side in qualification management. The senior leadership team acknowledge the significance of this role.
Positive findings 1.5 The review panel found that the SFA as a whole understands the importance of communication
and is receptive to the efforts of the communication team to deliver improvements. The communications senior leadership team is well regarded by the communications team and by the wider organisation. The panel was pleased to see that there is focus on evaluation of communication activity and a desire to use the data to learn and improve.
Areas for improvement 1.6 The review found that the SFA lacks a clear strategic direction. Consequently communication
activity tends to be functional rather than strategic. There is too much ‘sending out stuff’ (although some of this is due to contractual requirements) and not as much genuine engagement and dialogue with key audiences as the reviewers would have liked to see. Evaluation, while apparent, remains overly focused on awareness, outputs and outtakes, rather than business outcomes. The reviewers also observed that Gov.uk is not delivering what the SFA needs, and greater use could be made of other digital and social media channels, and stakeholder networks.
OFFICIAL
3
OFFICIAL
Recommendations 1.7 The review panel recommended:
• R1. The Communication team needs to support the SFA in addressing its pressing need to develop and share a compelling strategy for the coming 3-‐5 years.
• R2. In light of an agreed strategic direction the team should undertake a market audit, reviewing their communication objectives, key audiences, approach and channel use.
• R3. On channels, SFA needs to pay more attention to their use of social media, and they need to have more flexibility to operate outside of the Gov.uk platform to deliver inspirational material to key audiences.
• R4. The SFA should continue on its evaluation journey, moving away from only measuring awareness and instead evaluating more against impact on key outcomes, effectively reporting on findings and using analysis to drive genuine improvement in approach.
• R5. Work needs to be done to improve the relationship with BIS (and other government stakeholders). In particular, questions of role and accountability need to be resolved.
• R6. In light of recommendations 1-‐5 the SFA should put in place a targeted programme of investment in communication capability – ensuring that the team have the skills that are required for the challenges of the next 3-‐5 years.
OFFICIAL
4
OFFICIAL
Recommendations 3.1 This report has six main recommendations.
3.2 R1: The Skills Funding Agency is in need of a clearer strategic direction. The current absence of a well understood overarching strategy is one of the key causes of difficulty for SFA communication. While responsibility for developing this strategy is not the sole responsibility of the communication team, the team should support the SFA in closing this gap, and the SFA would benefit overall from becoming a more audience-‐centric organisation.
3.3 R2: Once a clear strategy has been established the communication team should undertake a market audit, reviewing their communication objectives, key audiences, approach and channel use. In particular, a clear link between business objectives and communication objectives needs to be established, and the team should be clear about the outcomes they’re looking for (and should know how they will measure against them).
3.4 R3: Specifically on channels, the SFA needs to pay more attention to its use of digital channels and social media, and it needs to have more flexibility to operate outside of the Gov.uk platform to deliver inspirational material to key audiences. It is therefore recommended that the SFA seeks an exemption from using the Gov.uk platform and also further develops its own online and social media presence.
3.5 R4: The SFA team should continue on its evaluation journey, moving away from measuring awareness, outputs and outtakes and instead evaluating against impact on key outcomes. Alongside this, the communication team should seek to improve the way that it reports success across the organisation –sharing evaluation data more widely.
3.6 R5: Senior managers in the communication function should invest time in improving the relationship with colleagues in BIS (and other government stakeholders more widely). Much of this engagement should focus on clarifying roles and accountabilities; but open discussion of working relationships and the concerns held on both sides would also be of benefit.
3.7 R6: In light of recommendations 1-‐5 the SFA should put in place a targeted programme of investment in communication capability – ensuring that the team has the skills that are required for the challenges of the next 3-‐5 years. The areas for development should be informed by the market audit recommended above, but the review team feels this is likely to include both digital and evaluation capability.
OFFICIAL
5
OFFICIAL
Actions
3.8 To achieve the outcomes intended by the report’s recommendations, the reviewers have suggested some specific actions for implementation in the next six and twelve months.
Item Action in six months Action in 12 months
Strategic direction • A clear organisational strategy should be developed, documented and shared across SFA.
• A clear communication strategy supporting the organisational strategy should be developed.
• The communication strategy and progress against it should be reviewed.
Market audit • The communications team should undertake a market audit, reviewing objectives, key audiences, approach and channel use.
• Review progress on key actions from the market audit.
GOV.UK • An exemption from being on gov.uk should be sought.
• Wider use of social media and other digital channels.
• A new SFA online presence should be in place.
Evaluation • Clear outcome measures should be established for all key elements of the communications strategy.
• Consistent and regular data reporting from communications to the wider SFA should be established.
• Review progress against outcome measures.
Strategic relationships • A workshop should be held with BIS colleagues to agree roles and best ways of working.
Learning & development
• A team learning & development plan should be in place.
• All members of the communications team should have personal development plans in place.
• Review progress against team learning & development plan.
