Lifetime Health and Fitness is a training provider specialising in the leisure industry. It is an employer-focussed organisation that delivers tailored training solutions to meet customers’ strategic and operational needs. It firmly believes in continuous improvement to benefit its customers, and strives to be ‘the most respected company within the leisure sector…delivering promises, exceeding expectations’. With this in mind Heather Frankham, CEO, said:
“the Training Quality Standard very much endorses our USP” and as a rapidly growing organisation she added that “it supported our future development and expansion.”
After making the Standard a priority for the organisation, Lifetime achieved certification against part A in July 2008 and went on to achieve excellence in Active Leisure and Learning in January 2009.
They took a group approach to pulling the application together, disseminating knowledge acquired from the Applicant Training Course to the senior management team, board members, and to those who would be involved in the project. They found the Applicant Guide to be a particularly useful document, which they consulted regularly whilst compiling the evidence required against the framework.
Katrina Hall, Quality Improvement Manager, said:
“Understanding what the assessor is looking for was key to ensuring the correct evidence was submitted by Lifetime. As a first time applicant, we found that the guidance provided some great foundations upon which to build our application.”
They found the assessment process to be enlightening, challenging, robust, and firm but fair. They were particularly impressed with the transparency of the process and, above all, that of the scoring mechanism.
Mike Beeney, Business Development Director, added:
“Going through the scoring mechanism at the Applicant Training Course was really useful and it allowed you to put yourself in the Assessors’ shoes and ask yourself ‘How would I actually score this?’”
Lifetime highlighted a number of benefits of achieving the Training Quality Standard including:
Most notably they recognise that the Training Quality Standard is a valuable improvement tool that has helped them to assess and evaluate their processes and procedures; to improve them in a time of rapid expansion. Mike Beeney offered: “even if you weren’t confident of achieving it, I’d recommend it as an improvement tool.”
Lifetime Health and Fitness should be commended for its recognition that the Training Quality Standard sits alongside its own values – excellence, professionalism and commitment – which strengthen relationships with its employer customers.