A presentation of work on the impact of training in Okehampton and a wider discussion of the challenges and lessons learnt from working with this particular cohort of organisations and people such as the difficulties in engaging people going through bad times.

1. The Impact of skills and learning
interventions in the Okehampton
Area

2. Objectives
• To identify and quantify the impact of such
interventions on individuals that benefit from
skills enhancement activities and training.
• To identify and quantify the economic and
wider socioeconomic impact at the
community level.
• Develop and test a robust methodology for
demonstrating the socio-economic impact of
SPOs.

3. Approach
• Return on Investment in Skills (RoIS)
• Index of social benefits (IoSB). Informed by NEF
National Accounts of well-being questionnaire &
the SOUL project
• Recruited 3 SPOs
– Rochdale Connections Trust (RCT)
– Westward Pathfinder (now Ockment Job Club)
– BiP (Business Information Point)
• Recruited of 64 trainees of which 50 successfully
interviewed on two occasions.

7. RoIS
• Total cost of providing training by SPOs
estimated to be £535,149
• Trainees costs accessing training were £5,825
• Across the three SPOs for individuals the RoIS
was 916%. For every £1 of cost incurred by the
individual and organisation in the delivery
(and participating in) training, the benefit to
the individual was £9.16.

8. Range of RoIS to individuals by SPO

9. Return on Investment in Skills Training to individuals
by employment status at the time of Interview 1

10. Social Impacts
• “I have got some new qualifications, made some friends and hopefully
will get a job soon!” (Unemployed trainee).
• “The [SPO] trainers were the first people to reflect positively on my
business idea and give me confidence to take it forward” (Unemployed
trainee).
• “… Really helpful on the confidence side, especially setting up a new
business with no idea …” (Business trainee)
• “Had difficulties getting a job and am now working independently on
web development. Opportunity arose out of an enterprise networking
event”. (Business trainee)
• “Have taken up voluntary work with a children’s charitable business, I
met through the training network” (Business trainee)

11. Maximum, minimum and average
change of the five dimensions for
individuals’ ISoBs

12. Changes in the Index of Social Benefits as a result of
skills training from different organisations

13. Changes in Index of Social Benefits as a result of skills
training by employment status
0%
5%
10%
General Well-Being
Attitude
Social NetworksTrust and Belonging
Well-being with Work/
Training/ Business
Unemployed Employed Self-employed All Trainees

15. Recommendations
• In the Okehampton context and given limited resources in the first
instance, training should be targeted at people who are unemployed
and/or aiming to establish their own business. Elsewhere this
recommendation would need to be considered within the context of local
labour market characteristics.
• Longer term training is more effective than stand-alone training (although
there is still a role for short, one-off training events). Therefore resources
should be targeted towards longer term training. This would also benefit
training providers who currently face a series of short term and uncertain
funding sources.
• Due to the relatively small sample size in this research it is recommended
that the impact tool is used on a larger sample. This will aid further
refinement and help clarify some of the training impacts reported here.
• The impact tool is designed to be relatively easy to use and analysis of
data collected has been automated. Nevertheless some resource would be
required to train potential users. This would not be expensive.