Hi,
I'm a trainer for a local authority in the revenues and benefits department. Obviously the public sector is looking at cuts in the next few months so i was wondering if anybody else (preferably also working in the public sector) who has a specific training role has had to diversify to "cement" their role in the organisation.
I was thinking that we (as a training team) should be expanding our knowledge to include other areas so we can save money by not employing external trainers and even offering our services out to other organisations and maybe making a bit of money in the process; somethng along the lines of basic Health & Safety training, Manual Handling, Soft Skills training etc.
Craig
5 Responses
Been there…
…got the t-shirt.
I was a Revs & Bens trainer for 8 years. Our team did diversify with varying degrees of success. However things to be careful about:
1) The peaks and troughs in legislation and new initiatives. I’d be wary of leaving yourselves too thinly spread especially in this time of new government. Think of things like VF, tax credits, LHA, ESA and all the training work required around them – your core business. You don’t wanto be training Manual Handling at the expense of this stuff. Especially when there’s crowds of people out there offering the generic areas.
2) Duplication. Do you have a corporate training team? In this time of doing more for hell of alot less a dim view will be taken if you’re duplicating work from the centre.
3) Is there the money about to invest in ‘relaunching’ yourself? New materials, accreditation, possible new equipment. It all adds up.
yes and no
Hi Craig
Since you don’t actually tell us what you and your colleagues train people in it is hard to comment on areas to diversify into, also bear in mind that by aiming to reduce your use of external trainers whilst potentially offering your services out you are aiming to compete in an already difficult market with many of the people you are asking for help from!
Me included!
I worked (four or five years ago) with a training team in a large corporate to do exactly what you are aiming for now. Thier single biggest barrier to success was not expertise or ability but credibility: they had no presence in the market they wanted to exploit. The issue was exacerbated by the measurement system used in the department; they were measured on "training delivered" which meant that all the re-skilling was seen as non-productive. Potentially this makes you guys more vulnerable to cuts as you seem to have time on your hands!
I suspect that being a trainer in the "revenue and benefits" side is pretty knowledge driven, so you may find that some of your trainers struggle with becoming soft skills trainers which tends to be more facilitative training and less "chalk and talk" but I’m perhaps being presumptive.
Good Luck
Rus
I love HB Regs 🙂
Thanks James,
I don’t think there is ever a chance that the HB regs would take second place (if only)!!!! Are you still in revs and bens?
We do have some corporate training but we are now a shared service and we seem to be part of everything and nothing.
Shared services
Interesting reply from Russ – don’t think you can sweepingly say specialist trainers can’t move into soft skills (which I’m sure was not Russ’ intention), but there can be difficulties no doubt. But perhaps the jump to compliance-y type stuff is not as big as it’s still quite black and white.
No, I’m not still in Revs & Bens – I decided to diversify myself. Actually felt quite constrained by training the legislation and systems stuff and wanted to stretch my training legs. Also found myself getting quite interested and passionate about the most obscure of HB Regs – knew it was time to leave then!! Gave me a great grounding in the desgn and delivery side of things though – and you’ll never get a tougher audience!
From a corporate team
I’ve had this experience where a team duplicated the offering that I put out from the centre – it was around health and safety. It seemed a good idea to them initially because of the cost savings. However, their potential audience was significantly smaller than mine, they had fewer dates to offer meaning less choice, and the day rate they were going to be charged was more due to the fewer offerings.
It lasted for about 5 months before they cancelled it as an idea and sent candidates back to me.
In respect of developing your skills outside R&B training (which is a highly technical area), have you asked your corporate team or other teams if they’d allow you to deliver some of their core calendar? They’re probably after facilitators at a cheaper cost, you understand the council the training is delivered in, and you get the opportunity to develop your skuills in another area.