Winners 2011 

Little Soap Company

When it came to the end of her three-year consultancy contract with the University of Gloucestershire in 2008 Emma decided to take a step back from her professional media life and start making soap in the country instead. Originally a hobby, Emma identified that there was a market for her creation and so began working on different ideas for soaps and developed her business proposal to establish her own business the Little Soap Company.

Little Soap's range includes various collections; Local Lavender varieties, a Garden Collection, an Unperfumed Deli Collection as well as Quirky Bars including a 5in1 Travellers Bar along with the Little Beast range of shampoo bars for our four legged friends. Emma has also branched out to making bespoke soaps for local events which have included the Pershore Plum Festival and the British Asparagus Festival as well as a range for Aga’s Betty Twyford brand.

The Little Soap Company is run entirely by Emma, who manages every aspect of the company and is solely responsible for creating the brand, the product, the packaging and the marketing.

The success of the brand has been recognised and is now stocked by one of the UK's leading supermarkets and is spreading up and down the country. "Within just six months of trading, we were taken on by our six nearest Waitrose branches, including Cheltenham and Cirencester,” says Emma.

Little Soap School launched in 2009 providing luxury one on one and small group courses from the north cotswold workshop.

2012 sees the exciting addition of an organic liquid soap range that is going to wholesale in to local boutique hotels, accommodations and tourist attractions.

Andrew Lansley (Enterprising Staff Award Winner 2011)

Audio Technician, University of Gloucestershire

Andrew came to the university as an audio technician, but since his arrival, has sought to add value to the student experience, and to the university as a whole, by forging new links with local businesses and community groups. Creating the AV (Audio Visual) Club in partnership with Tone Radio, Andrew created opportunities for students to work with Cheltenham Festivals and music venues, to gain paid and unpaid work experience on ‘live’ projects. Andrew then applied through the CEI for Knowledge Fellowship funding for his collaboration with the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and this funding has allowed him more time to spend on developing these digital projects. In addition to this Andrew has provided final year students and new graduates with further audio-visual work opportunities through Young Blood, a pilot student employability project that works closely with Tone Radio and the AV club, to take on larger, more complex projects.

Andrew has mentored students, helping them to develop their own enterprise skills so that they can make the most of the opportunities offered to them. He has enormous creative energy to help develop enterprise within the university; a vital resource at a time when the higher education sector faces its biggest ever challenge.

Key enterprising achievements:

• Bringing in new clients for student employment project each month.
• Provides students with opportunities to work in creative, real enterprise projects.
• Negotiating the rights to broadcast FM radio stations on restricted licences for local festivals including  Cheltenham Jazz, Wychwood Festivals and 2000 Trees.
• Developed profitable relationships with both local and national commercial interests such as Endsleigh and the SWSA.
  

Constructing Excellence - CEGlos (Enterprise Partner of the Year 2011)

Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire (CEGlos) was set up to improve efficiency in the construction industry in Gloucestershire. For the past eighteen months they have worked with the NEXUS Partnership to develop a programme of higher skills training for the construction and built environment sector. This is a unique enterprise, providing targeted management and leadership training at an academic level not currently available in the Gloucestershire area.

CEGlos have been working with Nexus staff and key representatives of local industry to investigate the current gap between the needs of those working within the construction environment and the courses currently offered by local higher education providers. The result has been a truly collaborative enterprise between local companies, organisations and the Nexus team, using the Gloucestershire Shell Framework to:

• Identify the need for a specific type of construction training focused on business improvement.
• Raise awareness in the academic sector to the industry’s needs.
• Develop an appropriate programme in collaboration with industrial and academic representatives.
• Facilitate cost-effective improvement in the local skills base to meet future challenges.
• Develop a sustainable relationship with Nexus allowing progression to higher levels of training and other opportunities.

Nexus is an employer engagement partnership between the University of Gloucestershire and Gloucestershire College that works with businesses to develop and deliver higher education programmes that are directly relevant to the needs of individual companies, their employees and the industrial sector in which they operate.

Tony Crook (Employer Mentor of the Year 2011)

Mentor on the BUG Programme

Tony has been an active mentor on the BUG programme since its inception, as well as tutor on the university’s Business Management course for the past eight years.

Recognising the business need for graduates to have some commercial experience of setting up new businesses, Tony got involved in mentoring more than 20 years ago when he was Chairman of the Enterprise in Higher Education programme.

Whilst mentoring on the BUG programme, Tony has worked with graduates on the successful launch of several new businesses. Not only does this include introducing students to the practical issues of running a business, but also other vital areas such as resources, funding, marketing, production and organisation. Tony expects to continue to contribute to the university’s business programmes this year and to build on what has been achieved so far, that is, getting new businesses up and running and providing opportunities and new jobs.

Ecclesiastical Insurance Group (Employer Partner of the Year 2011)

Juliet Daye, Learning and Development Manager

To achieve increased professional consistency across the business, Ecclesiastical Insurance Group developed the Ecclesiastical Academy framework to create a unified, sustainable approach to learning and development to achieve a high performance culture supporting organisational goals.

Nexus worked with Juliet Daye at Ecclesiastical over a 12 month period to develop a model for assessing the work-based learning and development occurring through the Sales Academy and it is now accredited by the University of Gloucestershire at Post- Graduate Certificate level using the university’s Personal and Professional Development flexible qualification framework. 34 people are enrolled in the first cohort and have engaged in substantial and sustainable learning. The accreditation is crucial for helping develop life-long learning within the business, which underpins the organizational approach to employee development and supports achievement of Ecclesiastical’s business goals.

The achievements of the Sales Academy are already evident and specifically include:

• Increase in new business of 13%.
• Increase in revenue of 18%.
• For every £1 spent on training, there has been a correlated return of £9.39 in new business and £55.69 in gross written premium.

The most significant element has been the experiential learning associated with designing and implementing a change in the way the organisation goes about personal development. This learning has facilitated the further migration of the programme to the Direct Insurance division and the company’s businesses in Ireland and Australia.