Challenge Blog

Many of the “myths” about training do little to encourage people to invest the time and money in developing their staff; we believe that these often spring from bad experiences with poor trainers and hope we can shed some light on the reality behind the myths about the value of training for your business.

1.       Anyone can be a trainer: we often hear “George used to work in sales so he started running training”.   Many people might be able to run some training but not everyone can be an excellent trainer, and after all if you are paying for it don’t you want the best you can get?  Look for trainers who get great recommendations from happy customers, have a proven track record and who demonstrate how they maintain and update their own skills and knowledge.

2.       No trainer can possibly understand the unique challenges in my business, they’ve never worked here: Sometimes this is true, particularly in legislative or compliance based training and at other times there is value in an external perspective, a fresh pair of eyes and a new approach, and be aware that many skills are transferrable across most industry sectors. Ensure that your trainer will spend time and effort getting to know all about your business and the unique challenges you face before delivering training.

3.       Those who can do, and those you can’t teach: Excellent trainers have real world experience in the areas that they cover in their training, proving that they can both do and teach!  Ask potential trainers about their background and their successes, and choose to work with the trainer who you feel will add most value in your business.

4.       Training will fix the problem / the trainer has all the answers: If you have unhappy or underperforming  staff, or if a department is failing, training may be part of the solution but it certainly isn’t the whole answer.  A perfect example of this is time management training – I promise you that it really WON’T result in the perpetually late employee getting in to work on time!  People must be willing to develop and the business must be willing to support this and create a culture for change and improvement. 

5.       We’ll spend money on training then the staff will leave to get a better job with their new skills:  Not necessarily!  As employers you need to create a working environment that people want to be part of, that people feel proud of and where they want to stay as they see opportunities for their career progression.  At the same time we must recognise that some people will move on in time, but our business will have benefitted from their increased skills following training for the time that they were employed by us.

6.       We haven’t got time / it costs too much: The successful business will invest time and money in training that adds maximum value to the business and that leads to increases in efficiencies or decreases in costs, so that a positive Return On Investment can be measured.   Talk to your trainer about how they will measure ROI so that you know the investment in time and money is worthwhile and justified.  Aim to be thinking “we can’t afford not to do this training”! 

7.       You can’t teach an old dog new tricks:  Well we agree - not if the dog doesn’t want to learn you can’t!  For training to be successful, both the individual and the company have to want to change and develop, and both need to know that there is value in doing so.  Training itself doesn’t change anything; it simply provides opportunities for people to make changes but they have to want to and the business has to support that in order for the changes to happen and be sustained.

8.       It’s just an excuse for a jolly – no one really does any work on training: if that’s the case it’s a very expensive day out!  If you want to take your team out for a fun day don’t pay a trainer to come along for the ride!  People learn best when they are relaxed and having fun, but a good trainer won’t be planning fun for fun’s sake.  A great trainer will ensure that there are learning opportunities that meet the agreed development objectives built into every activity that runs during the training day.  Make sure you agree objectives for the training with the trainer and with the trainees.

9.       It will be dull dull dull death by powerpoint:  It shouldn’t be!  Good trainers recognise that people learn in different ways and will use a variety of training methods to meet all the learning preferences.  Powerpoint is a wonderful presentation tool but that by itself is not training.  Ask your trainer how they work with all learning styles and what methods they use, then ensure their answer gives you confidence that they won’t bore your employees with endless slideshows! 

10.   We do all the work not the trainer: Often accompanied by concerns that “we’ll have to do role play” or “I’ll have to stand up and talk”.  Research has shown that most people learn best by doing and experiencing for themselves, so a great trainer will provide plenty of opportunities for people to “try out” new skills in the safe environment of the training room.  This allows opportunities to get feedback, make changes and try again with no fear of negative consequences.  Good trainers are not in the habit of humiliating people and “role play” as a form of torture is best avoided!  Experiential learning and opportunities to practise skills are powerful training methods, and a good trainer will ensure people feel able to try these out and to work outside of their comfort zone with support and encouragement.  It may look like the trainees are doing all the work – but the trainer will have worked hard to set up the right opportunities for this, and after all they are the ones that are there to learn!

Our conclusion is really quite simple; training is most successful, and none of these myths stand up to much scrutiny when the trainer and the business collaborate to ensure that any training meets the needs of the business and the employees.  Invest your training budget wisely and aim to work with trainers who are highly skilled and passionate about business success.

So this week sees Emma starting her maternity leave and we’re very excited to think that we’ll soon have our first Challenge Manager baby!  Aunty Challenge!

So this is a year for change and growwth for us both personally and as a business.

It feels exciting and yet a little bit scary too as we are still shaping what the future will be.  How we manage ourselves and our business through a period of change is so crucial to the experience our clients have of working with us so we’ll be doing our best to Manage our Challenges (so to speak!) in the same way as we support our clients to.

What is going on in your business that presents a challenge?  What exciting developments are you planning or managing right now?  How will you ensure success?

We wish you all the best with what you are doing and we are wishing Emma all the VERY best with her new arrival xxx

I was delighted to give a brief presentation this morning at a local business breakfast. Continuing my theme about engaging employees and training, I was pleased to talk about reasons why I believe that now, more than ever we need to keep on investing in the skills and abilities of our employees. Why now? Am I mad to be talking to you about spending money on training in the current climate? Absolutely NOT! Now is THE time to focus on training. Why might I say that? 1. You want to be FIT FOR THE FUTURE – if your business is surviving the credit crunch when your competitors aren’t then you want to be fit & ready to pick up the maximum amount of business when times get better again. Will people want the same things from you as they want now or will expectations have shifted? Ensure you and your staff are skilled for future needs – this is an essential time for forward planning. Remember THOSE WHO FAIL TO PLAN ARE PLANNING TO FAIL. Also take note of research that has shown that businesses that train their staff are 2.5 times less likely to fail than businesses that don’t. 2. You may find that there is time available to do training now – if people are currently under-utilised then their time can be well spent on developing their skills. 3. Now is an essential time to motivate, reward and ENGAGE your staff. Well planned and relevant training can do this. You want staff who remain loyal to you and being giving opportunities to develop their skills will help build and maintain this loyalty – it gives a perception of a business with a positive forward focus who are worth sticking with. Be imaginative – what training would your staff enjoy & see value in? What can you do that doesn’t cost too much yet still has a high perceived value? 4. You also want to keep the loyalty of your customers at a time when competition is fierce and other businesses may be cutting their prices – investing in ensuring that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of your teams has the skills and attitude to place customer service at the centre of their focus will help you maintain that loyalty. 5. Skilled staff save you money. We often challenge delegates on training to make efficiency, improvements or cost savings that are equivalent to the training investment – for example if everyone who attends meeting skills training then saves just 30 minutes a week in meeting time that adds up over a year to big efficiencies in excess of the cost of the training. Let your staff be your experts in finding ways to do things better, faster, cheaper and for more profit! 6. Skilled managers will also save you money as they will rely less on external help from people like me in matters like HR! 7. You can tie training in with your Corporate Social Responsibility commitments which is great for PR and brand awareness. We run many training programmes where the learning activities are “real” and geared towards supporting a community or charity project. The learning is high quality, meaningful and relevant, people remember the event for years to come, a charity gets help and you get great publicity- everybody wins! 8. A great reason to invest in training RIGHT NOW is that there is money available to do it! FREE money! There really is no catch – there are pots of funding available to spend on management and leadership development, NVQs, essential skills, bite sized learning programmes, and there is also sometimes money available to pay the wage costs while staff attend the training. Contact Train to Gain to find out more. 9. The next month or so is a great time to plan to do something as on May 14th it is Learning at Work Day – this is a national event as part of Adult Learning Week and is focused on encouraging us all to continue learning throughout our adult life. The theme for this year is SKILLED FOR SUCCESS and looks at three areas: a) Key competencies – literacy / numeracy / ICT / commercial / management. b) Soft skills – intangible yet essential – Emotional Intelligence / presenting / listening / decision making / creativity. c) Being ready to learn new skills – confidence / motivation & willingness / ability / awareness. Remember that learning can include non work training too – anything that gets people fired up and using their brain cells will be good for them and benefit your business! Any learning increases the capacity of our brains’ functions so be imaginative in how you introduce learning in your workplace. We’d love to talk to you about learning in your business so why not get in touch today?

I know that I am highly influenced by the weather, and so I probably mention it a lot in this blog, but it really does feel as if Spring has sprung and that some people are feeling more optimistic. We have seen an uplift in training bookings, as I think many companies have perhaps made the cost cuts they had to and are now at a point of getting on with running their business….part of which involves retaining, motivating, engaging and developing their staff. We have been talking to clients a lot about ENGAGEMENT - the importance of getting and keeping the loyalty of your staff, the value in them believing in your business and wanting to be part of it, the strength in them feeling proud to work for you and representing your company in a positive light at all times. This might not sound easy to achieve in current times, and yet it is more essential than ever to do so. We believe that investing in the development of your staff; showing both your belief in them and your loyalty to them will reap great rewards for your business. Training need not be costly and there are some great opportunities for getting financial support through Train to Gain to help cover the costs (including wages costs during training in some cases). Why not talk to your staff about their goals and the development they would like, then seek inspirational and exciting ways to make that happen? Create a buzz in your workplace that gets people talking. Encourage people to see learning as a continuous process and reward efforts to bring learning into the workplace where that learning benefits the business with cost savings or increased revenue. We get incredibly excited about working with businesses that have a passion for learning so why not give us a call and we’d be delighted to give you some great ideas and a free copy of our 7 Steps to Training Success. Also you might want to take a look at the Learning at Work Day website for some inspiration about what do in on May 14th 2009. http://www.campaignforlearning.org.uk/ If you do something great that adds to your learning and development, or that of your staff we’d love to hear about it! In the meantime I wish you all a Happy Easter.