Training and development for award winners

GSK IMPACT Awards Development Programme

Our three-day programme helps winners develop their organisations and their leaders. Informed by the rigorous assessment process for the awards, it is carefully tailored to the needs of each year’s award winners. It helps winners develop a range of leadership skills and gain knowledge in specialist areas such as:

• financial management and governance
• evaluation and knowledge spread
• having difficult conversations and HR
• communication styles
• developing authority and personal impact
• positioning your organisation using social media
• policy updates
• leading across a system

Feedback on the 2017 development programme

Previous participants commented on the excellent training and facilitation, its relevance to their work, how it motivated them and the unique value of working with other award-winning organisations facing similar challenges. These are some of the comments from our 2017 programme:

'The content of the days truly felt tailor-made.'

'The design, delivery, pace and information were all excellent. I felt supported and inspired.'

'My view is the bar was set very high for this programme and all the facilitators more than met this threshold. They were professional, approachable, entertaining/interesting and knowledgeable.'

'To be honest it was all excellent!'

'It’s a full-on three days but I liked that and it was time well spent. The planning and content were spot on.'

GSK IMPACT Awards Network

The GSK IMPACT Awards Network is a unique learning network that supports health and wellbeing charities to:

• develop their leaders on an ongoing basis, providing participants with the skills to respond to the challenges of their environment
• share experiences and expertise
• build the recognition of their significant and vital contribution to the health and social care system.

Which organisations are involved in the Network?

To become a Network member, a charity must have won a GSK IMPACT Award, for which they will have competed with more than 400 charities and have been through the rigorous assessment and judging process.

Network members’ inspiring work is diverse, tackling health issues like drug and alcohol misuse, mental health, trauma, supporting people with long-term conditions, and a range of interventions to prevent ill-health and promote healthy living. Its membership includes national organisations that support specific health conditions.

There are more than 120 members of the Network, representing over 70 award-winning charities from across the United Kingdom. All of its members are committed to ongoing professional development, collaboration and improving services for the people they support.

An introduction to the Network and Cascading Leadership programme

How does it work?

The Network is funded by GSK and hosted by The King’s Fund. The Network was created in response to requests from previous GSK IMPACT Award winners who wanted to continue the professional development and joint working that they had started during the award training and development programme, which they found so helpful.

The Network started as a small pilot project in 2012 and has grown substantially since this time. It now has more than 120 members representing over 70 award-winning charities from across the United Kingdom, with 11 Network events taking place in the past 12 months. The whole programme is driven by participants’ ideas and experience and is facilitated by a dedicated team of experts at The King’s Fund.

The Network explores many issues faced by health charities. Recent topics have included: people and communities as assets for change, peer consulting, managing change and transition, facilitation skills, engaging and influencing, and working with groups and teams. A range of presentations from Network members share challenges and learning, and there are opportunities to network and provide and receive support.

Feedback from the charities taking part has been very positive and they report that the Network has a unique value, giving free access to excellent trainers and facilitators, peer support with no competition, and supports them to work in a very challenging environment. Feedback from wider stakeholders suggests the Network offers valuable and unique expert advice on how to tackle some of the most entrenched, complex and costly health issues in the United Kingdom.

To learn more about the Network, please contact Lisa Weaks, Assistant Director, Leadership and Organisational Development / Head of Third Sector at The King’s Fund: l.weaks@kingsfund.org.uk

Recent feedback on the Network

'I feel very proud that I’m part of this Network – it’s a real endorsement and I’m leading a relatively small charity in terms of some of the big players out there. I feel I can stand proud that I am affiliated.'

'The GSK and The King’s Fund partnership is really important. Some people apply for a GSK IMPACT Award to get access to the Network and that gives you an indication just how rare it is to get this quality of training. The Network really makes the difference in keeping and growing the standards we achieved to gain an award, especially when training is so often the first thing to go when organisations have difficult funding decisions to make.'

'Having access to excellent training is unusual, but the dual combination of excellent training while working with a whole range of award-winning charities who are all striving for excellence is unique.'

'Working as a chief executive can be a lonely place to be sometimes. The GSK Network events offer so much to advance both personal development and support.'

Cascading Leadership programme

In 2016 we piloted the Cascading Leadership programme across the UK, where 15 GSK IMPACT Award winners worked with 15 other charities to develop and support their leaders. GSK, The King’s Fund and Comic Relief partnered on the programme and it was designed to enable high-performing GSK IMPACT Award winners to share their leadership expertise with the wider voluntary and community sector.

The programme was externally evaluated and the November 2016 report concluded:

'Without exception, they (the 30 charity participants) view Cascading Leadership as a success in terms of the benefits they have gained both individually and organisationally.'

The programme is now being funded by Comic Relief and Big Lottery Fund.

• Find out more about the Cascading Leadership programme and how to apply