How Can IOLP Help Me?

1. If you are planning to continue your studies, find an apprenticeship or a job an employer, trainer or educator will be looking for certain skills. • What if you have the same qualifications as other applicants? What skills will you have that will make you stand out? • In an application and at interview you can present the skills you will develop as an attractive incentive for them to give YOU the place. How Can IOLP Help Me?

2. IOLP will help you to break down projects or tasks so that you can • identify clear targets. • set ways of achieving these targets. • build in opportunities of monitoring how the project is progressing. • identifying changes and improvements to your plans. • reviewing the whole project to see what you could have been done better and what went really well. • identify the skills you have developed from this and can use in new tasks/ projects. What are these skills then?

3. You Line Manager has given you a small project to help four telephonists improve their communication skills with customers. What would you do: • Before you even speak with your team you would probably set targets on wanting them to be involved in the ideas on improving communication to customers from the beginning. • You would also set a target of wanting your team to be confident that they already have good skills and then to recognise areas they could improve. • You would draw up some meetings, group discussion, reflection activities and hopefully get the team to make suggestions on areas to improve, with everyone’s agreement. These would be Action Points – the smaller activities to meet the targets. • build in opportunities of monitoring how the project is progressing. • identifying changes and improvements to your plans. • reviewing the whole project to see what you could have been done better and what went really well. • identify the skills you have developed from this and can use in new tasks/ projects. How IOLP could help me at work

4. You would build in one or two regular meetings with the whole group, where everyone could discuss how things are going, successes, difficulties and make changes to anything that you are doing . • After the monitoring meetings you may decide that meeting some telephonists on a one to one basis would help – this is making changes to your plan in light of the monitoring you did. • When reviewing if communication has improved you would look at everything you did and see what worked, or what could have been done better. • You would probably identify from this that seeing your team on a one to one basis from the start would work well, so would use this strategy in the future. You may note also that getting the whole team to discuss and decide together where areas could be improved worked really well, and use this again in a similar project given to you.

5. Set two main targets that will help you with your progression overall • For each target - plan two smaller activities called Action Points • Do the Action Points • Review how everything has gone and what you have learnt What I need to do?

6. How does this fit with my Progression? Basically you will: • Research into your chosen Progression routes and provide evidence of that research • Reflect on your strengths and areas for improvement in your studies to help you achieve a successful application

7. IOLP in my Progression Booklet • To achieve the qualification you and your Tutor will need to complete the IOLP paperwork properly. • This is done as you go along. • There are 4 sheets in the booklet, which are titled clearly, that make up the IOLP qualification. • There are examples of completed sheets in the Staff version of the booklet.

8. How Your Tutor Will Help… Your Tutor will: • Read and check your booklet as you progress and give any advice in a tutorial or a one to one session. ALWAYS write down the key points your tutor gives you. • Check that you have completed the 4 IOLP sheets correctly with no empty boxes and relevant Targets, Action Points and reflective comments • Add relevant comments to the 4 IOLP Sheets in your booklet

9. What happens next? • When you have completed the Progression work in tutorial your tutor will check that you have completed everything. They may need you to finish any bits you have missed. • The completed booklet will be given to your Senior Tutor for moderation. • If you have completed the booklet fully you should achieve your L2 IOLP.