The HR Booth – a member of the ‘Friends of eCom’ collaboration initiative – has been appointed a Kickstart Gateway, under the UK Government’s initiative to create job placements for 16 to 24 year-olds who are on Universal Credit. As a Kickstart Gateway, The HR Booth will be supporting employers with the Kickstart programme, working in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Job Centre Plus, as well as providing employability training for those young people on the scheme that it administers.

This training covers a range of subjects including CV writing, application forms, interview skills, communication skills, work ethics, confidence and time management. The HR Booth intends to deliver this training via a mix of eLearning modules and Microsoft Teams – which, as a Friend of eCom, is where it’s seeking support from the digital learning and assessment specialist, eCom Scotland.

So, to help the HR Booth provide some relevant digital eLearning resources to complement the Kickstart programme online, as part of a journey to satisfy the required deliverables, eCom is providing eLearning content within its learning management system (LMS), eNetLearn, to provide guided learning pathways for learners.

“In the past, this sort of learning would have taken place in the classroom,” said eCom’s Emma Dickson. “Our joint vision – with The HR Booth – for this project is a blended approach to delivery, housed in eCom’s eNetLearn LMS platform which can deliver interactive and accessible online learning modules, online classrooms/webinars, task outlines and supporting documents and mixed media.

“The LMS can make content available to learners as part of a singular course or within a wider programme containing a range of multimedia learning materials,” Emma continued. “eNetLearn will provide the infrastructure for this programme’s digital delivery while providing the management information required to evaluate the impact of learners’ progress and engagement as the project matures.”

Alistair Booth, Managing Director of The HR Booth, said, “We want to create sustainable employment for the Kickstart placements – and offering a first-class training programme is a top priority for us to ensure we fulfil our obligations as a Kickstart Gateway.

“We already have a great relationship with eCom and, when it came to developing our employability training programme, I shared my vision with the eCom team. We’ve worked together to produce our e-learning modules.

“I’m excited about the offering we’re providing to young people and I’m delighted to be working with eCom on this project, where we’ll give young people the best possible chance to kickstart their careers,” he added.

“Friends of eCom is an initiative that enables us to work collaboratively with other like-minded, forward thinking companies,” explained eCom’s Managing Director, Wendy Edie. “This informal joining together creates mutually beneficial outcomes and builds long lasting relationships.

“I believe that competitive advantage isn’t driven by the resources you control but, rather, by those you can access,” she added. “With Covid-19 providing complex and interconnected problems for the leaders and organisations with whom eCom work we realised that, to truly help, we needed to create collective impact.

“Our ‘Friends of eCom’ initiative has evolved due to the speed and need during lockdown and includes many of our key partners such as The HR Booth, our membership groups, our clients and like-minded individuals who offer complementary products or services that can add value.

“Friends of eCom has allowed us all to pool our business development activities, drive innovation, support each other during these times – and it’s working,” commented Wendy Edie. “eCom’s happy to expand the number of its Friends to include any non-competing organisations wanting to experience the business benefits of networking and collaboration at an organisational level.”

For further details of the Friends of eCom initiative, please contact eCom and/or visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b337iK6xyR0&feature=youtu.be

A UK Government initiative, the Kickstart Scheme provides funding to create new job placements for 16 to 24 year-olds on Universal Credit who are at risk of long term unemployment. Employers of all sizes can apply for funding which covers 100 per cent of the National Minimum Wage (or the National Living Wage depending on the age of the participant) for 25 hours per week for a total of six months; associated employer National Insurance contributions, and employer minimum automatic enrolment contributions. Employers can spread the start date of the job placements up to the end of December 2021.

The HR Booth (http://www.thehrbooth.co.uk/) is an HR consultancy and outsourcing provider, solving people problems, saving its clients time and money. Based in Scotland, but working throughout the UK, the consultancy offers a full range of services to help organisations deal with employing and managing people. This allows business owners to focus on the growing their business, knowing their people are being managed effectively.

eCom (https://www.ecomscotland.com/) creates innovative learning solutions – aimed at increasing learning engagement and driving productivity – to help organisations achieve their goals. With offices in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Athens, Georgia, in the USA, but with customers from around the world, eCom focuses on the delivery, tracking and reporting of workforce learning and development through innovative technologies. Its products and services address a range of workforce management, development and training challenges, including eLearning, online assessment, blended learning, competency management and accreditation.