1. Work

Our vision, mission and strategic options process helped set Worthing College on a new trajectory

Worthing College is a progressive, inclusive FE college on the south coast of England, UK. With a new campus, new principal and new governing body, it was time to refresh the vision and strategy and start thinking digitally. The college is now rated Outstanding by Ofsted.

Welcome to Worthing College

Worthing College is a leading further education college situated on the south coast of England, offering a wide range of A-level and BTEC programmes, as well as apprenticeships and foundation programmes for degree-level study. The college recently went through a change of leadership, which brought about something of a cultural revolution. The new principal, Paul Riley, sought to develop higher levels of staff and external stakeholder engagement, and to drive up standards. As a result of this change, the college was able to provide three consecutive years of "best results ever" for its students and was recently awarded 'Outstanding' status by Ofsted.

The challenging bit

  • Nobody in the college was capable of citing any part of the mission statement, the college vision, or the values the college held to be important, meaning the college didn’t live by these values
  • The strategic objectives were fine enough for internal stakeholders (such as board members), but were meaningless to the public, parents and students
  • The efforts of the college to promote itself online were limited to the actions of one or two people, while college staff as a whole played no role in digital marketing

What we did

Rework of mission, vision and values

Using a tried and tested approach developed by Disquiet Dog's MD, Richard Bradford, and Caroline Hanson (currently Head of Learning at EduMe) during their time at International House, London, the team built a series of strategic statements that the whole college responded to in order to paint a picture of the shared vision of the college. From this work, the college was able to rewrite the vision and mission statements, safe in the knowledge that it already drew on high levels of engagement and a feeling of community.

Created a totally new way to express strategic objectives

The strategic objectives of an organisation will quite often be dry and financial, and represent – at best – a bit of a guess as to where things are heading in terms of sales or profitability. For a further eduction college whose output has far more to do with the outcomes of its students, the traditional model of stating very internal-sounding strategic objectives felt inappropriate.

Disquiet Dog came up with the concept of 10 promises that would seal a commitment between the college and its students. If the college succeeded in hitting those targets, it would quite naturally fulfil its strategic objectives. Behind the scenes, numerical targets and SMART objectives still underpinned the 10 promises, so that staff had very tangible KPIs to reach. Find out more about Worthing College's 10 promises

Conducted audit work around Worthing College’s keyword landscape and online visibility

Once it became clear where Worthing College was heading, it fell to Disquiet Dog to conduct audits to understand how well the college appeared in online searches. The new leadership team inherited a marketing strategy that had largely been offline. This was no longer fit for purpose in view of the target demographic of students and their parents and carers.

Digital marketing training and development programme

Lastly, Disquiet Dog delivered an introduction to digital marketing to the senior leadership team and marketing staff, based on the analysis we'd already conducted. That meant the session was totally adapted to their context.

Really enjoyed the day – busted some myths and expanded my mind. Thanks to Richard Bradford and Disquiet Dog for a great day!

Steven Foden, Vice-principal, Worthing College

What did our work achieve?

Here’s Paul Riley again, Principal, Worthing College:

Disquiet Dog helped us to create a bold mission, vision and values statement that all members of the college community can own and live by. Furthermore, they provided us with a fresh approach to recognising the value of keyword language in social media posts and greater focus on online visibility in our marketing and communications planning. This resulted in a more confident, digital marketing-aware senior team (and marketing and events team) that embraces social and web content more readily in delivering the key messages the college shares within both our internal and external communities.

Thanks to Richard at Disquiet Dog for helping Worthing College embrace a new digital strategic future for our marketing and communications - inspirational!

Paul Riley, Principal, Worthing College
Photo of Paul Riley

Here are the services that Worthing College used: