Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity

Matching the sporting workforce with funded training when the pandemic threatened job stability

Client

01

“Help us launch a product in less than a month.”

The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA) is the professional development body for the UK's sport and physical activity sector.

Challenge

02

The world of sports management was on the brink of losing 30,000 professionals as a result of Covid-19, with expiring qualifications and the closure of facilities.

CIMSPA needed to quickly put in a solution to match training providers with those seeking qualifications, ready for when sport opened back up again.

Solution

03

Along with CIMSPA and Sport England, we created ReTrain - a web application launched as an MVP in four weeks. The following two agile sprints got it to completion within 11 weeks of having received the brief.

ReTrain works to identify training needs and matches them (against geographical and socio-economic data, as well as organisational need) with registered training providers, through a web interface to quickly bring the parties together.

Results

04

A hugely successful programme for CIMSPA, delivered at pace. We achieved 18,000 lockdown qualifications, 600+ training requests and 100 UK employers upskilled their activity workforce.

We’ve since moved on in a programme of continual improvement, currently working on its second phase.

The operational delivery of the ReTrain project was centred on the bespoke, purpose-built platform that Freestyle designed. They were efficient, agile and flexible, responding to all user needs and ensured we remained on track in building a robust platform, integral to ReTrain’s success.

Spencer Moore, Director of Strategy, CIMSPA