The University of Huddersfield is one of more than 50 business schools involved in delivering the Government’s Help to Grow: Management course and has successfully recruited four intakes of local small businesses in its West Yorkshire catchment. 

Katey Curtis, Senior Education Practitioner, Huddersfield Business School said: "I could not be more positive about the Help to Grow: Management programme, the content, format, new mentoring platform and the mentoring consortium behind it are excellent.”

The Help to Grow: Management course offers senior business leaders 50 hours of leadership and management training across 12 weeks, with the government covering 90% of the costs involved. They each receive one-to-one support from an experienced and rated business mentor. Training is delivered via a national network of over 50 business schools including Huddersfield Business School.

Data shows since January, more than 3,600 course participants have been auto enrolled onto the Help to Grow: Management mentor platform to be matched with one of more than 2,500 trained mentors now available to access across the UK. Participants are either self-matched with a mentor online or carefully broker matched with a relevant mentor by advisers.

Businesses are reporting positive impacts to Huddersfield Business School. BOSS Training saw an upturn in performance and felt in a better position to grow the business following the course. 

Tom Burwell, 36, head of sales and soon to be director of the Brighouse-based health and safety training company, just outside Huddersfield, went on the 12-week programme in October 2022 and was matched with a mentor via the digital mentoring platform. 

He said: “Although it is still early days, we have already increased our turnover a little since I completed the course. What is much more important is the additional processes we have put in place that have not only prepared us for growth but have ensured our continuous growth in the future. They have allowed us to plan better to ensure we are always moving in the right direction.”

Emma Jones, CBE, Founder of small business support platform Enterprise Nation, part of the consortium appointed to recruit and match mentors with participants, said: “Helping businesses to have the processes and the knowledge to grow is an important step towards growth. The UK’s entrepreneurs have been putting one foot in front of the other despite higher levels of debt, inflation and soaring energy prices. Helping them to make more efficient use of digital technologies, developing and diversifying their services and products, and implementing innovative management strategies will unleash the potential of entrepreneurs and the Help to Grow: Management course is playing a critical role in this by increasing resilience.

“By having the added support of a trained mentor, businesses on the course can be supported as they put their new knowledge into practice.”

Tom joined his uncle’s business ten years ago and worked his way up to be head of the sales team.

He said: “I really figured my way around the job at the time and worked hard. But I was hungry for more knowledge and training for myself and when the idea that I should step up came along, I joined my local Help to Grow: Management Course.

“The course was brilliant. As we went through, there were many things that made me proud of where we already are - but it also highlighted areas where we could improve and change. 

“It was like - Ah we’re not doing that. For example, an operations role – we didn’t have that.

“We’d focused on the selling and making and we were bringing the business in, but the finance and operations processes were not there.  As a mature business as well, we were really reliant on knowledge of fantastic people we have here. But there was an issue when we took on people - it took so long to get them up to speed – even on ground level roles. I realised we should be able to do that a lot quicker.

“Getting the opportunity to have another voice with a mentor was also brilliant. I found my mentor Dionne Clark through the Enterprise Nation platform and got in touch. I was particularly drawn to her because she had so much relatable experience. She has worked in manufacturing, for example. When I was looking for my mentor, I was aware of finding someone that understood the construction and manufacturing sector because it has a very specific way of working.”

Face to face mentoring

“We met at a service station near Durham for a coffee and just talked. She listened and she understood, and we followed up with a Zoom call every two or three weeks. 

“She offered insight you can only get from the experience she had – real world insight. If there’s an issue with someone in the team, she showed us how to work through it with them - and then how to make sure we’re not in that position in the future. In the long run, it’s much better to find a working solution than to dismiss someone and start again. 

“She pointed out that most of the time, I was so deep in the middle of things, I don’t always lift my head out of it. She said ‘the thing you don’t do often enough is raise your head up’. She told me to stop working in the business and start working on the business.’

“When you’re being mentored, you realise that you half know the answers yourself, you just need someone to guide you there, think it out and talk it out to get there.

“Dionne never gave too much advice, she just gently guided me in the right direction. 

“One of things she was insistent on was that she queried where I was sitting (in the middle of the office). She pointed out that you should be trusting management and other staff to deal things. She said ‘You’re spending time dealing with minutiae, get your own office away from there.’

“I followed her advice, and it allowed the management team and staff to take more responsibility themselves and they developed as well.  She was completely right!”

A consortium delivers the mentoring element of the course, a job that would previously have been done by business schools which were also responsible for recruiting, managing and paying their own mentors. 

Led by business support group Newable and including Enterprise Nation and the Association of Business Mentors the consortium was appointed by the Government to develop a national network of business leaders and experts who will share their skills and experience with firms on the practical management training course.    

Katey Curtis added: "Initially we created our own database of mentors.  We had six mentors on our books but when we moved to the voluntary model with automatic matches using the platform, we were able to focus on delivering the course and not managing mentors. This has helped.”