What is the Excellence Toolkit?
The Excellence Toolkit is based on the internationally renowned Excellence Model© and has been customised specifically for the social housing sector. The Excellence Toolkit is easy to use and provides you with a superb improvement agenda around all aspects of your business. It also gives you a score so you can chart your progress over time. Finally, you can gain external recognition to mark to progress you have made.

It will also help you to develop plans for improvement and to identify where you are in relation to external recognition options such as the EFQM Levels of Excellence, Investors in Excellence or our own Marques of Excellence scheme.

If you are far advanced on the journey to Excellence, the Toolkit output can be used to help entry to regional or even national Excellence Awards.

Outputs from the Excellence Toolkit
By the end of the programme, your team will have:

What's involved in using the Excellence Toolkit?
The programme involves 3 stages – Introduction, Consensus and Action Planning and your team will be supported through each stage by an expert Facilitator:

(1) Introduction – When you have recruited your team (a cross section works best), your Facilitator will guide you through a half day Introduction to explain how to complete the Excellence Toolkit booklet

(2) Consensus – the team comes together for a day long workshop where, supported by your Facilitator, people reach a consensus on what you do well, where you might be able to improve and a score

(3) Action Planning – This half day session helps you "make sense" of the findings from Consensus by grouping the detail into improvement themes and building realistic and achievable action plans.

How do I make use of The Excellence Toolkit?
The Excellence Toolkit is a proprietary product. It is only available for use under licence from North of England Excellence. North of England Excellence, or its licensed Associates, act as facilitators for organisations using the Excellence Toolkit process.

How do I make a start?
The Excellence Toolkit is managed by North of England Excellence (NoEE) who have a network of trained Facilitators across the country. If you are interested and would like more details, such as timescales and costs, please get in touch with Dave Rusk, the North of England Excellence Director of Education and Training.

For more information please contact Dave Rusk, Director, Education and Training by phone on 01925 715245 (mobile 07710 238257) or by e-mail at daverusk@compuserve.com or info@northofenglandexcellence.co.uk