Improvement Leader

On an improvement leader apprenticeship course, you’ll help develop strategy, provide leadership and coach and support colleagues in advanced analysis.

An improvement leader is responsible for developing strategy, providing leadership and mentoring, and aiding colleagues with advanced analysis to improve the organisation.

This position will have you reporting to board members or department heads, and you’ll be in charge of a team of improvement specialists who will carry out your strategy.

You’ll work with employees from many departments to help them set and achieve goals, and you’ll be in charge of improvement initiatives within the company’s largest and most important projects.

Create top-level value stream maps to discover improvement opportunities, which would then be handed to improvement specialists to create new products, processes, or services.

Although employment is normally centred in an office, it requires you to work wherever your efforts are concentrated.

What you’ll learn

On an improvement leader apprenticeship course, you’ll learn to:

• Contribute to the development of an improvement strategy and the business planning cycle. Examine the current circumstances and seek out chances. Develop deployment methods that take essential enablers into account. Contribute to the development of an improvement culture. Maintaining involvement requires efficient communication.
• Use appropriate methods and procedures to identify, assess, and address underperformance problems and conflict within teams.
• Create, fund, and evaluate educational projects. Assist with candidate selection for various levels of training.
• Plan and manage an improvement programme with the appropriate governance in place. For managing a portfolio of improvement initiatives, implement reporting, escalation, audit, and risk management/mitigation tools.
• Give guidelines on how to conduct a well-organised project review. Make a group coaching assessment. Identify, diagnose, and resolve project performance issues.
• Examine your progress reports and presentations, as well as those of others.
• Assess the impact of change and seek strategies to improve outcomes while directing and aiding others in achieving their objectives.
• Explain the value of appropriate technique selection to others, and use learning and resources to help the organisation make the best decisions possible.
• Make rules for locating and prioritising tasks. Assess the success of the identification and prioritisation procedures and take corrective action to improve the outcomes. Participate in the process of identifying areas for improvement with the leadership team.
• Incorporate the importance of problem definition based on evidence into your daily work.
• Find strategies to improve company and process performance while maintaining process control by applying process thinking.
• Examine the effectiveness of a Lean strategy and make recommendations for improving outcomes.
• Examine the data gathering methods others use, including tool selection and application, conclusions, and recommendations.
• Evaluate and guide others’ graphical and statistical analysis regarding tool selection and use results and recommendations. 
• Select the correct techniques and measures for process capability analysis and recommend how an organisation may improve.
• Assist and coach others in planning to guarantee the most efficient approach feasible.
• Encourage the development and application of mathematical models.
• Create a Creative Thinking strategy to help you reach your objectives.
• Describe the business case, goals, processes, and key tools. Determine whether it has the potential to be used in the product and project life cycles, including Lean Design.
• Make suggestions for how a company could use Statistical Process Control to achieve long-term gains.
• Create a benchmarking strategy to aid in programme improvement.

Entry requirements

Individual employers will set their entry requirements

• Typically Improvement level 5 qualification or equivalent
• Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this before taking the end-point assessment.

Assessment methods

The End Point Assessment comprises two distinct assessment methods: 

• Professional discussion, underpinned by a portfolio of evidence 

• Dissertation, presentation and questioning

Apprenticeship standard

More information about the Level 6 Improvement Leader Apprenticeship standard can be found here.

Apprenticeship end point assessment

For more information about the End Point Assessment Process, please read the Institute of Apprenticeships’ information page.