9 Responses

1. How many days?
   Paul, this is a difficult one. – and a loaded question??

   as an indpendant trainer the recommended target is 100 days – but this allows for marketing, finance admin etc.

   As an employee things are different.

   If you are doing 4 days a week, every week this does sound a little excessive – HOWEVER what else are you paid to do?

   From a business perspecitve if that is all they want you to do – then that is what you are paid for.

   One approach may be to explore options of sharing 2 roles between 2 people to reduce the load – great of someone in the organisation that wants to ‘get into training’

   I would be interested to see how this thread pans out

   Mike

2. Ideal – 1 day per year at £100K per day!!!
   Mike’s figure of about 100 days per year given admin & prep etc sounds about right to me.

   If you are doing 4 days per week constantly, what is the effect on your energy levels, and how is this affecting your delivery?

   I’m not aware of any ‘industry standards’.

   Good luck,

   Martin

3. Training Time
   HI Paul

   I have worked in a number of organisations where the operational trainers trained every working day. They also worked shifts (nights/evenings and weekends) and every working day was a full training day – as well as having to find time to do their admin/prep whilst the trainees were doing something else like buddying with an experienced member of staff.

   I know that as the manager for these teams it was difficult to manage as they had to train the same course (induction and product/phone training) week after week. The courses ranged from 2 to 6 weeks long.

   Motivation and enthusiam were difficult to maintain and this did have a knock on effect with sickness absence at times.

   However the biggest driver was the fact that the operation viewed training as a cost – they do not directly contribute to revenue – so any day not physically training staff (these were all contact centres with high induction needs in very large numbers) was a loss to the contract. So from a trainer point of view it was very much “what do we pay you for” because without the constant training there would be no trainers. Catch 22!

   But at the same time I also know of other organisations that have strict number of training days and build in substantial amounts of time for “training development” as well as “trainer development” (this is sometimes weeks per year!). So the range out there is substantial!

   I believe it depends very much on what the attitude to training is and where we are commercially/economically – where there are significant financial pressures then training will need to be as productive as possible. And unfortunately to most organisations productive = physical training. I have known senior managers who have “promoted” training as an option to people because it is “easy” and you “don’t do very much!”. On the flip side I also know trainers who go very upset when they found out they should be in work and ready to run training BEFORE the delegates arrived and would be there after the delegates left and that generally they would get shorter lunches/breaks as they would have prep to do and should be back in the room before the delegates anyway! They had truly bought into the idea that training meant they got lots of breaks and got to start late/finish early – because they did when they were delegates on courses!

   I too will be interested to hear what others have to say on this!

4. Variation
   I think a lot depends on the variation of material, if it needs updating and reworking constantly then 4 days a week might be too much.

   However I’ve trained large volume software roll outs – where the course didn’t need redevelopment because the software didn’t change during the roll out and I trained every day straight for about 9 months.

   And to be honest I enjoyed every minute of it – the biggest buzz I get from training is actually delivering training – it’s fun to design courses, do needs analysis and evaluation but the meat of this job is delivery and I love it. No energy level drop off for me.

   But it’s different strokes for different folks and I suspect that as I further my freelancing career that the number of days will need to drop off in order to ensure high quality delivery.

   This is a fascinating thread and I hope others will comment too.

5. A health and safety perspective
   I agree with the previous replies. Regarding demonstrating physical moves to the students, I think that there could be a health and safety issue as there is potential for the development of a musculo-skeletal disorder if you are involved in frequent and repetitive physical movements. For example, the first aid procedure for resuscitation has recently changed, from the previous ratio of 2 breaths to 15 chest compressions, to the new ratio of 30 chest compressions to 2 breaths. Some first aid trainers have reported hand/wrist problems due to repetitive demonstrations using 30 compressions. It may be worth looking at your current job from the health and safety/risk assessment perspective.

6. pull up a sandbag, and I’ll tell you a story
   Paul
   A long time ago I served in the Army (these were the days when Friar Tuck was the regimental padre and Robin Hood the Skill at Arms instructor)
   We worked five or six days per week for 16 weeks at a time, sometimes we would be training “physical moves” and sometimes other things such as “blowing things up” or “digging holes”.
   It was tiring, especially when we did the three day exercise with about 45 minutes sleep in the whole time, but we were all there because:-
   a) we loved it and
   b) we had been selected and trained for it.

   More recently (out in the soft but hard civilian world) I ran the same one day course 21 times consecutively and though I sometimes wondered whether the group in front of me had actually discussed a particular issue, or whether that was yesterday, I still enjoyed it immensely. Similarly a colleague had to drop out after 14 days because he found it too tiring and repetitive FOR HIM.

   I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that statistics are of little value in individual circumstance, if YOU feel that this is getting too much, then seek an alternative….there must be a way of reaching a happy compromise for you, your employer and your trainees.

   Rus

7. It all depends
   In my last job, our training target was 80% classroom training which equated to 4 out of 5 days.
   However, in my new job it’s about 5-6 days a month sometimes less, so it all depends on the job.

   That said, I would rather be in the classroom.

   Mat.

8. Training Days Per Week
   Hello
   I agree with the comment that it depends on your job role and the organisation you work for.
   I a previous role I was given lots of other training-related tasks to do so ended up delivering maybe one day a week (or sometimes less). But that was because I had to do all my own admin, TNA, printing and attend meetings etc.
   In my current role – all that is taken away from me – I turn up, deliver and go home. In this role I don’t think it is unreasonable to be training 4 days a week as that is all I have to do.

9. Flexible around principles
   Hi Paul,

   I came across this problem about a decade ago and the eventual method that seemed to work was based around the principle of:
   3 days contact
   1 day maintenance of course materials
   1 day self improvement

   Admitidely the 62 trainers were of technical nature and our revenues were based on their saleability and therefore their knowledge Skill Experience.

   As far as the timing was concerned most of the courses were 4 or 5 days long in the same week – so the 3+1+1 tending to work out as perhaps two weeks contact and a whole week of non contact.
   This kept the trainers fresh and reduced the amount of burnout – it also meant that on the Self Improvement day they were gaining more Qualifications NVQ4 TDLB etc – which meant we could charge more for their time.

   Hope this helps – if you need more detail, please ask.

   Neil