Employer enagement in FE

Warwickshire College, one of the most outstandingly successful further education colleges in the country, has selected the ROI methodology as the way to meet the new Learning and Skills Council standard for employer engagement. In April 2008 abdi began supporting Warwickshire College's team that works with employers.

Investors in People

abdi and its partner The Assessment Network are under way with a major project for Investors in People UK to develop and pilot a business scorecard measurement process and template using the ROI methodology. The scorecard will capture standard data demonstrating the business impact of employee development within individual IiPUK clients. IiPUK will then be able to aggregate individual company scorecards to give regional, sectoral and national pictures.

Equal-Invest

abdi ltd has been the official evaluator for Equal-Invest, a 2007 development project for social enterprises funded under the Equal Initiative (ESF) in the UK. abdi used the ROI methodology to create a framework and standards for measuring the impact of the project on the fifteen social enterprises being developed. Now that the project is complete, abdi is using the ROI scorecard approach to evaluate the project overall, assessing impact and value.

Public Sector

The ROI methodology offers an ideal discipline for evaluating publicly funded projects:

achievements against targets
benchmarking
(if required) value for money

Delegates from the public and voluntary sectors attend abdi's workshops to acquire the skills to report meaningfully on project outcomes.

abdi itself has an international track record in

evaluating publicly funded projects
evaluating government initiatives
helping public bodies to set up outcomes evaluation for funding programmes

abdi ltd are delighted to be continuing their work with the British Council. The British Council is the UK’s cultural relations organisation, working to build trust and engagement for the UK through programmes in the arts, education, English, science and society across over 100 countries worldwide. In the past, abdi have provided consultancy to evaluate specific British Council programmes and the ROI methodology has been adopted as the approach to evaluating staff development.

In 2009 the corporate planning and performance team were tasked with developing a single approach to evaluation. After reviewing internal and external practice they have adopted a similar model to the ROI methodology to evaluate the impact of cultural relations work.

This new approach is being piloted in 2010 in one of its geographical regions, South East Europe, that has 18 countries represented from Turkey to the Ukraine, Austria and Azerbaijan. As part of embedding this approach and developing the evaluation professionalism of staff, abdi’s ROI UK Foundation and Evaluator awards are being piloted with programme management staff. abdi is working with the British Council to incorporate real examples of British Council work into the course content and will test this in May 2010. All going well, this could lead to a co-badging/branding agreement between the two organisations and Edexcel.

This work area is only one of many in a complex change programme of simplification and professionalisation. However, it is significant in being a real force for positive change:

focusing the organisation on what matters,
being flexible enough to be relevant across all British Council work and locations and
contributing to continual learning and improvement while
keeping administration and bureaucracy to a minimum.

In the long term, the performance and planning team see this work as a cornerstone in developing the organisation’s leadership in global cultural relations.

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NHS

abdi has been developing an evaluation strategy for an innovative partnership project between NHS Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority and the regional Learning and Skills Council. The partnership will be primarily (though not exclusively) aimed at delivering skills across the NHS regionally through the LSC's flagship Train to Gain Programme. abdi has helped to design the evaluation strategy using the ROI framework in order to show the partnership's impact and value to the stakeholders (NHS, LSC and participating Trusts) and is supporting the strategy's implementation.

Singapore Workforce Development Agency

In 2006, abdi worked with the Singapore Workforce Development Agency to build an evaluation system to be used to measure the impact of all publicly funded workforce education and training interventions for the sectors that are considered to be the main drivers for the future growth of the Singapore economy to 2020.

European Social Fund

abdi has been awarded a contract by the European Social Fund Office of the Czech Government on behalf of the ESF to moderate a community of interest on impact evaluation which will inform ESF round 2007-2013.