The National Social Marketing Centre (NSMC) is a strategic partnership between the Department of Health in England and Consumer Focus (formerly the National Consumer Council) The NSMC is mandated to work across government and across sectors and with organisations either commissioning, or developing, behavioural interventions for a social good.
The aim of the NSMC is to embed and cultivate social marketing within the current policy environment and, with their mandate from the Department of Health, primary customers are those working at the consumer end of health promotion: i.e. those in the PCTs, NHS, SHAs, PHOs and local authorities. The NSMC also works with the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Marketing and Sales Standards Setting Body..
The Business Requirement
NSMC required to build a list of independent social marketing practitioners who would work with the organisation as associates. Due to the complexity of the potential contracts, and the breadth of skills and experience available, the NSMC decided that candidates should undergo a self-assessment as part of the application process. This would guide candidates as to the requirements of being an associate as well as considerably reducing the work-load on NSMC staff.
The Sigmer Solution
Sigmer Technologies were commissioned to develop an on-line candidate self-assessment application which would use the National Occupational Standards in Social Marketing as the basis for the competency self assessment. The application, which was developed in under two weeks using Sigmer's Survey Suite System, provided functionality to allow the candidate to complete a multi-stage competency self-assessment as well as to record candidate details and allow the candidate to upload their c.v. to a secure area.
The application, which was hosted from Sigmer's secure servers in their London Data Centre, was available 24 x 7. Due to the length of the assessment, the application allowed candidates to save an assessment at any time; and return to it later. The application automatically e-mailed completed assessments to NSMC staff for further review.
The Result
The candidate self-assessment application was very successful and provided the NSMC with a stream of assessed, graded and documented candidates.
Yinka Opaneye, HR Generalist, Jubilee Hall Clubs:
“Sigmer was friendly and highly efficient. Rather than constantly telling me what wasn't possible, there was real collaboration."
