Help to Grow: Management is a 12-week practical management training programme designed to support senior managers of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) to boost performance, resilience, and long-term growth.

Facilitated by small business experts from the Bristol Business School at UWE Bristol, Help to Grow: Management offers short, focused sessions to allow you to complete the course alongside running your business. The programme combines online sessions with face-to-face learning, alongside peer support and mentoring.

Help to Grow: Management is 90% subsidised by the Government. Participants pay a £750 fee.

Help to grow logo.

Overview

Practical curriculum

The curriculum features:

  • eight facilitated sessions, each one lasting two hours and delivered online
  • four practical, face-to-face case study workshops
  • ten hours of one-to-one support from a mentor with experience of running a business, providing you with personalised support to develop your own business growth plan
  • peer networking, including peer group calls that give you the opportunity to share experiences with a small group of other small business leaders
  • access to the Alumni Programme featuring events with inspirational speakers, business clinics and networking events.

Key areas of leadership featured

  • Strategy and innovation
  • Digital transformation
  • Winning new markets
  • Vision, mission and values
  • Developing a marketing strategy
  • Building a brand
  • Organisational design
  • Employee engagement and leading change
  • High performance workplace
  • Effective operations
  • Finance and financial management
  • Implement growth plans

If you would like further information of the Help to Grow: Management Course, please see the programme brochure (PDF).

Eligibility

Your business must:

  • be a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) based in the United Kingdom
  • be from any business sector, employing between 5 and 249 people
  • have been operational for at least one year
  • not be a charity.

You must be a senior decision maker, such as Chief Executive, Finance Director or Operations Director. If your business employs between 10-249 people, please note that you can send up to two participants on the course.

Meet Ross, Managing Director of Bear Industrial Engineering Ltd

Find out how the Help To Grow: Management course has enhanced Ross' understanding and application of business concepts to grow his business.

Meet Mark, Founder of FUNdays Club and FDC Training & Consultancy

Mark completed UWE Bristol’s Help to Grow: Management course in June 2022 and shared with us what stood out to him most on the course.

How to take part

UWE Bristol deliver the Help to Grow: Management programme across the South West of England. Our courses are aimed at businesses in the following areas:

  • Gloucestershire
  • Swindon and Wiltshire
  • North Somerset
  • Somerset
  • North Devon
  • the West of England Combined Authority area (Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol and South Gloucestershire).

Registrations are now complete for our current courses. We are currently planning our year three schedule with courses starting in September 2023 throughout the South West. Details will be available soon.

To register your interest in Help to Grow: Management, please visit our enquiry page.

Help to Grow enquiries

When registration opens for year three of the programme, we will send you further details about the registration process. 

You can find out more about the programme on the Small Business Charter website.  

You can also contact the Help to Grow team at helptogrow@uwe.ac.uk.

Help To Grow: Management podcast series

Our podcast series highlights the positive effects and contributions that the Help to Grow: Management training course is having on local businesses and how it is helping them on their individual growth journey.

Listen to our podcast
Help To Grow podcast and tagline 'Invest in yourself and your business' with the HM Government and UWE Bristol logos on the bottom left and right corners.
Fiona Major, Help to Grow participant.

"It was a busy 12 weeks with a fair few late nights, but I came away with incredible new skills, experiences and a solid plan to guide us on our next phase of growth at Systemagic Ltd."

Fiona Major, Operations Director at Systemagic Ltd

Fiona Major Operations Director at Systemagic Ltd

"The mentoring sessions were a great way to take the entire course material, distil down what I found most relevant to Renewable Exchange and then turn these into actionable changes. It's a great programme and you've got a great chance of getting some real success out of it."

Rob Ogden, Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange
Rob Ogden, Help to Grow participant.

Rob Ogden Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange

  • Help to Grow logo.
  • UK Government logo.
  • Small Business Charter logo.

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