Business Advisor - Workforce Development Specialist
The Growth Company (GC) Business Support team is currently recruiting for a Workforce Development Specialist to be based within Rochdale Local Authority. This role is designed to support business owners by leveraging deep expertise in organisational development to drive business growth and promote good employment practices.
As a Workforce Development Specialist within the Greater Manchester (GM) Business Growth Hub, you will:
1. Deliver high-quality organisational and workforce development assessments across a portfolio of business owners and leaders.
2. Diagnose and support people-focused improvements within organisations.
3. Develop and implement tailored action plans that align workforce development with business growth strategies to enhance productivity and enable sustainable growth.
This is a place-based role, requiring a strong understanding of Rochdale’s local business landscape, including prevalent industries, skills needs, opportunities, and challenges. You will be expected to work within the Rochdale Local Authority area at least three days per week, engaging with businesses across a variety of locations.
GM Business Growth Hub is a community of specialists with a passion to help businesses across GM to realise their ambitions. Since 2011, GM Business Growth Hub has supported more than 15,000 businesses including start-ups, scale-ups and established businesses, providing finance guidance, creating international links, and paving the way for innovation and people development across the region. We work with the best of public and private partners, offering expert one-to-one and peer-to-peer business support, events, specialist programmes, funding and much more.
Key Responsibilities:
4. Establish and maintain effective relations with business owners/leaders and internal and external key contacts to promote the work of the Workforce Development team and help facilitate high-quality referrals.
5. Work with a diverse range of training providers maximising the use of the GM Skills Map portal to provide impartial brokerage training solutions to needs identified at an individual, departmental and company level.
6. Develop and maintain a high-level network of business/professional contacts that generate personal referrals.
7. Handling client enquiries via a range of methods such as face-to-face, virtually, by phone and email, to assess the growth potential using appropriate tools, processes and systems where required.
8. Ensure client enquiries and partner referrals are correctly recorded on the Business Growth Hub’s CRM system.
9. Undertake detailed diagnostics in person to identify the appropriate starting point of support, followed by a detailed organisation/training needs analysis on an individual, department or company.
10. Undertake detailed discussions with clients around complex workforce/organisational development issues to understand their workforce challenges.
11. Ensure that the monitoring and collection of output and impacts data is undertaken throughout the project.
12. Deliver group learning/workshops/cohort sessions on specific topics to a mixed group of businesses either face to face or using virtual platforms. Microsoft Teams/Zoom.
About you:
13. Proven critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
14. Ability to identify opportunities and be innovative.
15. Superb communicator who can network effectively.
16. Excellent planner and, organiser.
17. Ability to work at a senior strategic level, work within tight deadlines and handle challenging situations that leaders may experience.
Skills required:
18. Account management skills are essential.
19. Expertise in facilitating, coaching, organisational change management, performance analysis, people management, culture, values, employee engagement, recruitment, retention and induction is essential.
20. Degree/CIPD level qualifications desirable, but not essential, or the relevant business experience to match those.
21. Proven track record in managing a range of workforce development issues.
22. Knowledge and understanding of HR practices, policies, and processes to support the workforce development within a business.
23. Well-developed IT skills.
24. Excellent presentation skills both written and oral.
At GC, safeguarding the welfare of all individuals including vulnerable adults and young people is a top priority, and we expect all staff to uphold this standard. All appointments follow Safer Recruitment Procedures, including a DBS check carried out by Due Diligence Limited (DDC Ltd), at no cost to the successful candidate.
Please note: It is a legal offence to apply for a role involving regulated activity if you are on the Barred List.
We are committed to increasing workforce diversity and offer a guaranteed interview to applicants who meet the essential criteria and either have a disability or are from a diverse ethnic community.
If this applies to you, you can request consideration under this scheme during the application process. Your request will be shared only with the Hiring Manager and Internal Recruitment Team.