From the Chief Executive

I have spent my career on both sides of this. I have commissioned training as a client and been disappointed by it, and I have delivered it as a provider and understood exactly why the client was disappointed. The gap is almost never in the content. It is in what happens on either side of the room.

Before the room, nobody established what capability was actually missing. A department asks for a leadership course because leadership feels weak, and eighteen people attend a course that was correct in general and wrong for them. After the room, nobody arranged for the learning to be used. Participants return to a manager who does not know what they covered, to a workload that resumed while they were away, and within three weeks the material is gone.

skills+ is organised around closing both gaps. We diagnose before we design, even when a client has already decided what they want to buy and would rather we simply supplied it. And we build an application stage into every programme, a real task, a briefed line manager, a date to report back. That stage costs very little and determines almost everything.

The second thing I care about is what stays. This region has spent an enormous amount on capability building over the last decade, much of it with providers who left nothing behind. We train internal faculty, we certify our clients' own coaches, and we hand over the operating manual for every academy we build. If we have done our work properly, a client needs less of us in year three than in year one. That is an uncomfortable commercial position and it is the right one.

Finally, accreditation. Everything on this site that says qualification is awarded by an institute with a published standard and external moderation, CIPD, CIPS, CMI. Everything that says certification is issued by a recognised body. We are careful about that distinction because our clients' credibility depends on it. A government entity that tells a regulator its people are qualified needs that statement to survive scrutiny.

If you are considering a programme, ask us what should be different in twelve months. If we cannot answer that with you, we should not be taking your money.