6 Responses

1. Internal or External?
   Assuming that these are internal training courses and that they are mandatory (as health & safety should be) you could try just signing delegates up, providing them with some alternative dates to choose from and if they then fail to attend you could then charge their department for what was a free course. I know several organisations that use this to great effect – one company offered all their courses FOC internally but a no-show without a minimum of 3 days notice would be charged at £1,000 to their department – this cut drop out rates to an absolute minimum. Of course there was some leeway – if someone was ill or had a real emergency but there was no justification for just deciding that it wasn’t important enough when it would cost your department a grand not to attend.

   If it’s external then I’d suggest you need to seriously look at making the courses more interesting (which might not be a bad move on the internal front too) – use of drama etc. can improve even the driest subject.

   Good Luck with this.

2. Passport to Success
   We are trying something new this year. We are marketing all of our soft skill training courses (we call them “success skill” courses) under a travel theme we call “Passport to Success”. Each participant gets a passport booklet. Every time they attend a class, they get a sticker. At the end of the year, they can redeem them for “fabulous” prizes depending on how many stickers they get.

   We had an education fair to kick off the program. So far, the response has been terrific. We have had waiting lists for most of the classes.

3. 1 Review course presentation 2 For external programmes use ‘reve
   1 Try reviewing course presentation methods, trying to avoid presenting a series of dates of legislation to memorise, but rather ensuring underpinning concepts are understood and, crucially,how to find detailed legislative requirements when needed. It’s always a balance, of course!

   2 Particularly for external courses (but it might be possible to modify the idea for internal ones too, use ‘reverse charging’. To book a place, the delegate sends a cheque (or internal funds transfer note?)for a suitable amount, say £30-50
   The cheque is not presented for payment, and if the delegate attends, is returned to him/her at the end of the course. Non-attendance means that the cheque is presented for payment, thus covering food/room hire/materials preparation costs.

4. response
   Thank you for your contributions-certainly some food for thought and I think I will be using some of them.
   Thanks again
   pete

5. Sound bites
   If people are co-located, you could try shorter sound-bite type sessions. This can help if people have a busy schedule and the idea of attending a ‘dry’ topic is unattractive.
   I had one H&S trainer that always had donuts to eat on his session. It was a surprisingly cheap yet effective way of getting people to come!

6. BRAIN BASED LEARNING
   We have found that incoporating brain based learning techniques into dry courses really helps gain interest and a buzz. Eg using music, colour, lots of posters and movement and getting people involved in activities. Stretch Learning are experts in this and have a really useful website