IMI corporate members have access to our Knowledge Centre, which plays host to the largest collection of business and management development resources available in Ireland. The Knowledge Centre can be accessed online, or at our Sandyford Campus.

Niall O’Connor, HR Learning, Career Planning and Development Team Lead at the Department of Social Protection has the challenge of managing a large team, and keeping them all motivated when it comes to learning and development. With over 1,400 accounts created with the IMI Knowledge Centre, Niall is aiming to get more and more team members engaged and making use of IMI resources.

The Department has its own development programmes that are run in-house, and one aspect of this includes facilitating staff to further develop their leadership and management skills through IMI membership events and Knowledge Centre resources.

“We ask that staff who are on development programmes do roughly 6 – 10 hours of learning over the course of the year, using IMI resources.” Says Niall. “One way of getting staff to use their Knowledge Centre account is through email promotions. We’ll promote the kinds of resources that are available to all staff, or to staff of certain grades.” In addition to the Knowledge Centre, Niall promotes IMI events and webinars in the same way.

“One of the biggest challenges is time – my time, and the team members’ time.” Niall has recently onboarded a new member of staff who will focus on learning development, and will aim to educate the other staff on how to access IMI resources, what events are upcoming, and how to make the most of the IMI membership.

“We see staff who don’t necessarily have management or leadership experience going into interviews, and it’s really difficult for them. We want to use our IMI membership and resources as a stepping stone to help these staff members gain additional knowledge to bring to interviews.

“We’re getting value for money and when we do a cost-benefit analysis, the benefits we get from membership are beyond what we’re paying for.”

IMI members can create their Knowledge Centre accounts and access the full library of resources by visiting library.imi.ie.