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Newsletter Spring 2010

Alexander Davey is IMA International’s Operations Manager. He started in early 2009, after living overseas for 18 years, the last 8 years of which he spent working for large relief and development organisations, mainly in Indonesia, but also in East Timor and Pakistan. He has worked in a variety of management roles with NGOs and UN agencies. Here he shares his thoughts on involving employees in decision making processes. “ The curse of training organisations is that they often provide great advice and insights to their clients, but they can struggle to apply this advice within their own teams. In this respect there is a parallel between training providers like IMA and the relief and development organisations we serve. In my years as a manager with various INGOs and UN agencies, I noticed that the advice and support provided to the communities where we were working was often not applied internally with the staff of the

organisation. For example, we would talk endlessly about participation with our target communities whilst excluding our own security guards, cleaners and drivers from involvement in any programmatic development or planning even though they came from those same local communities, and as such had valuable knowledge about the local context. Since I started with IMA in January 2009, one of my main areas of focus has been to take the wisdom that we provide to our clients and apply it internally with the team here in our UK office. In order to walk the talk at IMA, we have recently been focusing on our communication with clients, with each other, and with our front line colleagues: the consultants who provide all our services to our clients. We have analysed our communication with our clients, aiming to always provide them with what they need to hear rather than what we need to tell them. Internally we have begun to look at how to maintain mutually respectful relationships through appropriate forms of communication, always including regular one-on-ones and matching the communication form with the message to be communicated. With our consultants, we have begun a consultation process. We sent out a questionnaire to gather their initial feedback, which we have followed up with a workshop for those consultants able to attend. We are now in the process of looking at all their recommendations and working out how and when to implement as many of these as

Walking the Talk Promoting team participation in the workplace

IMA International is recognised by Investors in People (IIP), a public body that helps organisations manage and develop their people to improve business. The IIP framework is based on the idea that if employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, and if their talents are built upon, they can be more productive and innovative at work. Organisations can achieve this standard if they engage staff in decision making and align individuals’ goals with those of the business. For example, employees are involved in developing the business strategy and plan, and they take responsibility for their own learning to improve performance of the team as a whole. The IIP framework also means that management staff lead and guide the team capably through a relationship of trust, openness and coaching, recognising individuals’ contributions to the organisation’s success.

 → www.investorsinpeople.co.uk

possible. As the person responsible for the smooth running of the IMA team here in the UK, it is my commitment that we continue to match the way we operate internally with the advice and support we provide our clients. ”

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Apprenticeships in ActionBuilding foundations for two new careers

As part of our commitment to investing in training and development, two of our team at head office are working as apprentices with us, using their work to gain National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in Business Administration. Luke Beasley, 20, and Oliver Spiers, 19, started with IMA International in 2009 and will have completed NVQ level three by the end of 2010. Here they explain how they’re getting on and what the qualification means to them.

Tell us a bit about your background. What were you doing before you came to IMA?Luke: I used to work for my dad’s building company, doing labouring, and then I also worked for my granddad, who’s an architect. I was doing admin tasks like invoicing and typing for him, but that wasn’t full-time work.Ollie: After school, I went to study business and sociology at college. While I was there, I worked part-time in a pub kitchen. After I passed my exams, I went on to a job in landscaping for a year, redesigning people’s gardens.

How did the opportunity of working with IMA come up?Luke: I wanted a job that would be more of a career than working for my dad, so I went for lots of interviews in early 2009. I wanted to do an administrative job and found out that IMA was looking for an apprentice. I thought it was a good opportunity to gain experience.Ollie: I came across IMA’s job advert at college. Nobody gives jobs to people with no experience, so I was specifically looking for an apprenticeship that would give me a qualification and work experience together.

Tell us about how the apprenticeship works.Luke: Well the NVQ certificate is based wholly on coursework, there’s no exam. We have to choose units from the syllabus, such as telephoning, e-mails, IT, or travel and accommodation. With each unit, we have to complete tasks in our work that match up with the Knowledge Points that we need to tick

Luke Beasley (left) and Oliver Spiers (right): apprentices in Business Administration

off and document. Finally, everything is assessed and moderated, and we receive our certificates.

What are you getting out of working here?Ollie: Experience and knowledge about how to work in a team, and how an organisation works. Also, I’m learning new IT skills and am gaining certificates in Health and Safety, Fire Safety and Risk Assessment, in addition to the NVQ and technical certificate.Luke: Apart from the NVQ, I’ve been gaining knowledge of an office environment and of international development, something I didn’t know anything about before. I’ve learnt about NGOs and projects around the world by talking to people all over the world.

How are you finding it working here?Luke: Things are always different, which can make it exciting and sometimes stressful. I like the change and variety in my role. I’m getting more responsibility now too. It’s better than I expected. I enjoy communicating with people all around the world, building a relationship and sometimes meeting

them on courses in Brighton. Ollie: It’s a busy office, so I need to stay very organised to cope with the workload. I’m learning how to prioritise, plan and space out my tasks, so it’s really building my organisational skills. I quite enjoy maintaining good relationships with our suppliers.Luke: It’s also good to be part of a team so that when things pop up, we can ask each other for help.

And finally, what are your next steps going to be?Ollie: When I’ve got more experience in admin, I can see myself beginning to manage some of the administrative tasks. Working here is also showing me that I’d consider a career in international relations.Luke: As I move into the NVQ level three, I’ll be taking more responsibility with the scheduled courses. I’m also really good with numbers so it would be great to take on some accounting and budgeting tasks. I think working with IMA has opened doors for me, and perhaps I’ll pursue a career in charity work.

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Next Scheduled Courses

Brighton

Results-based M&E Systems12–16 April

Monitoring & Evaluation19–30 April

Cape Town

Project Management3–14 May

Monitoring & Evaluation3–14 May

Working with Logframes19–21 May

Results-based M&E Systems24–28 May

Kuala Lumpur

Organisational Leadership7–11 June

Monitoring & Evaluation7–18 June

People Management14–18 June

Teambuilding21–23 June

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InSight Recent and Upcoming Work

For much of the last few months, the IMA office has, like much of the UK, been in the grip of snow and ice. Luckily for our clients this hasn’t stopped us from providing the training and consulting services that will be the topic of this quarter’s InSight. In December, I spent five days in Dushanbe, Tajikistan delivering a 5-day training course for the Aga Khan Network. This short course provided core M&E skills and allowed me to spend time with the AKDN’s Health, Education and Mountain Development teams to revise and enhance their project planning tools and logical frameworks. As well as working with a wonderful team of people, I also got to sample some traditional food and experience a beautiful landscape. Another notable project was the recently completed workshop in Ethiopia. IMA Associate Consultants Steve Creffield and Julia Smith spent five days with managers from three NGOs (The Brooke, Farm Africa and The Donkey Sanctuary Ethiopia)working on the practical challenges of people management and change. Participants

learnt and applied tools for effective decision making and delegation, conflict management and coaching. In the coming months IMA will be delivering training and consulting services in Italy, Lebanon, Nigeria, Panama, Senegal, Sudan, and Thailand. I look forward to sharing something of these experiences with you next time. As ever feel free to contact me if you have any questions on the work I’ve mentioned, or would like to discuss an upcoming project you’d like help with. Best wishesTristan

Tristan.Measures@imainternational.com

Participants in Tajikistan (top) and Ethiopia (bottom) enjoyed their recent IMA courses.

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Corporate Social Responsibility

Chris contributing to educational development in the local community

IMA’s Managing Director, Chris Grose, has been a governor at St Lawrence’s School in Hurstpierpoint since 2006. The role of a school governor is to support the Head Teacher and teaching staff in providing the best possible learning environment for the 424 pupils at the school. Each term, the governing body meets to discuss a range of issues from finance to performance and standards, and from special needs to health and safety. Each of these issues is managed by a different committee; Chris is the chair of the staff and pupil welfare committee. He has a team of three other governors who meet with the Head Teacher throughout the year to discuss issues specifically focused on the welfare of teachers, office administration and premises staff and of course pupils. The school has almost 60 staff working together to inspire the children around them. At the beginning of this year, the staff and pupils worked together and agreed shared values of caring, respect, teamwork, independence and reaching for the stars! The pupil welfare part of Chris’s committee’s work is particularly rewarding and he has spent time interviewing a cross section of pupils aged four to eleven on how they feel about life in school. This review has been done by Chris each year and continually highlights the school as one in which the pupils are happy, feel safe, encouraged and yet challenged. Over the years IMA staff have presented to various year groups at the school on life in their countries or shared experiences of life overseas. Some of our course participants have also met with the school staff and pupils particularly to discuss teaching methods, people management and performance management. Chris has recently been accepted to serve for a further three years as a governor representing the Local Education Authority and with three children at the school and an active office, he is happy to be able to support learning in this rural village community.

IMA’s new green policy

In the last few months we have been working with a local environmental consultancy firm to develop our environmental policy. We recognise that our day-to-day activities have an impact on the environment and we are committed to reducing that impact wherever possible. We identified two important ways our work impacts on the environment. On one hand, our office causes our main impacts to arise from use of facilities (energy and water use, and waste disposal) and use of stationery. On the other hand, as we deliver training and consultancy all over the world, we require a great deal of international travel to be done. To reduce our office’s impact, we have taken three initial steps. Firstly, we are reducing energy consumption by installing low energy lighting and heat reflectors behind our radiators. Secondly, we are cutting down waste by reusing all paper and recycling paper, plastic and metal. As part of this step we are using printing suppliers who are accredited with ISO 14001 and the Forestry Stewardship Council. Thirdly, we are choosing materials and suppliers that give us environmentally and socially responsible products. For example, we traced the history of our new IMA bags right back to their production in China, looking at the factory audit and seeing photos of the production line and workers’ living conditions. Our new pens are made with biodegradable polyactide plastic that decomposes naturally in the ground within six months. In the longer term, our international travel is also something we are committed to reducing, since long-haul flights emit huge quantities of harmful greenhouse gas. We will need to consider options such as carbon offsetting and teleconferencing, as well as using more local trainers on our training courses. We have just arranged for all our electricity to be supplied from renewable sources through a company called Green Electricity. Our environmental policy is now part of our staff induction process, so everyone knows their responsibility for considering the environment in their work, and promoting environmental concerns to our customers and suppliers. Through 2010, we will be developing a set of environmental targets and an action plan that will ensure we are doing as much as we can to promote environmental wellbeing.

IMA’s commitment to the local community and our new green policy

Chris discussing curriculum support for Geography with Year 1 teacher Laura Holman IMA cotton canvas bags from China