Some firms don't need IIP to tell them how important their people are. Even before Image & Print Group gained accreditation, the firm had always believed in the importance of staff as the principal resource of the company.

Dedicated to the development of all its employees towards the achievement of its business objectives, Image & Print Group maintained a training and development regime. Training needs were reviewed regularly and acted upon.

To certify this commitment to quality and development, the group went through and was awarded the international standard quality assurance ISO 9002 in 1994. This recognises the group's policy of training and evaluating those whose work affects quality at each stage of the production process.

Not content with this accolade, group managing director Ken Roberts continued to research ways of improving training and development in the company, without the need to repeat the tedious and time-consuming paperwork leading to quality assurances.

''I felt we were doing well with the human resource development, but wanted to look more into multi-skilling,'' he said. ''It was an extension of our previous commitment to training and development, but I wanted it to be a bit less formal. I was shy of getting involved with IIP at first because I thought it would be a lot of work.

''After examining it I realised although it would take a lot of effort, there would be less paperwork than there was in attaining ISO. Basically, this is a company which wants to help individuals develop - we wanted a process which would give accreditation for the efforts of everyone in the company. It was important from a people point of view.''

Glasgow Development Agency wasted no time getting Image & Print Group introduced to Esteem. The company attended a series of Esteem workshops to see what was involved in the IIP process. With its guidance and encouragement Image & Print soon committed to the process and began to work through it block by block.

The first stage was to formalise and publish the company's people policy - a document which lists all company objectives regarding staff and outlines the ways in which it hopes to achieve them. It has published its promise to keep employees advised of business objectives and how they are contributing to them.

It promises to regularly review the training needs of all employees and make adjustments and improvements where necessary.

The company also says it will continuously train and develop individuals throughout the period of their employment and encourage them to contribute to identifying and meeting their own needs.

This investment in training is regularly evaluated and all employees are encouraged to come forward with any difficulties or suggestions on how to improve their training. This, says the people policy, is in the best interests of morale and positive progress.

It may have taken the company some time to complete the process, but it is delighted with the results so far. ''It was worthwhile,'' said Roberts. ''It's difficult to compare accurately expected growth now against growth without IIP, but what we are seeing is sustained growth in profitability since we received accreditation.

''The effort everybody has put in has been tremendous - they've all been awarded a day's holiday for their hard work. Our clients are all delighted on our behalf - and I believe that having the IIP logo next to the ISO quality assurance means both existing and potential clients will know we're a company to watch.''