Business Improvement Techniques is a work-based competency qualification. The main objective of the awards is to improve business performance, with a central theme throughout of improving business activity by continuous improvement. This enables companies and organisations to reduce their waste/costs, improve their productivity and ultimately increase their competitiveness.

Who is it aimed at?

The level 2 award has been designed to cover those people who are:

• Workers involved in business improvement within a team who wish to have their business improvement competencies assessed for certification purposes.
• New employees who have undertaken some business improvement training and are now acquiring experience within a team and wish to demonstrate their competencies for assessment purposes.

The level 3 award has been designed to cover those people who are:

• Employed as supervisors, team leaders or facilitators and are responsible for carrying out business improvement activities
• People who through Continuous Professional Development are being prepared to take on staff responsibilities in a business improvement environment.

The level 4 award has been designed to cover those people who are:

• People who have overall responsibilities for business-improvements and will probably be middle management with specific responsibilities for achieving business objectives
• People who through Continuous Professional Development are being prepared take on management responsibilities in a Business Improvement environment.
• Full time facilitators on Business Improvement delivering improvement training across the business. They may not have specific day to day people responsibilities.

Qualification Structure

There are two pathways at each level; you can achieve either a Process pathway or a Quality pathway. The awards are made up of mandatory and optional units. The mandatory units cover those areas which have a common approach such as safety and team working. The optional units offer a choice of techniques and systems that can be combined to meet the needs of organisations and learners.

How is the qualification taught and delivered?

This is a work-based competency qualification. Evidence for this award should ideally be obtained from the working environment where work activities or work outcomes assessed are the learners own work/contribution.

Progression

Depending on the level a learner has completed, they can progress on to the higher levels of this qualification.