Trainer’s Tip: Competency Workshops
Buffy Sparks gets advice from member Mike Burney-cumming on content for a workshop focusing on competencies and competency-based interviewing. Here is an exercise I have used successfully in the past. It works work well with competencies and appraisals.It involves having a collection of Paintings, A3 size. Any Art type pictures or scenes will do, even […]
Trainer’s Tip: Training Academy For New Entrants
Heather Stockwell gets advice from member Rich Lucas on how to set up a training academy to ensure new employees have the required levels of soft and IT skills needed to work on a technical services desk. Have a good induction This can take care of most of your company procedures etc. After induction is […]
Trainer’s Tip: How Much Delivery Should Training Officers Do?
Glenn Bracey replies to Mandy Hetherton’s question about how much training should be delivered by training officers tasked with delivering courses rather than designing or developing them. If you want to stimulate, create and sustain burnout go for five out of five days. By doing this for any sustained period (in just a few weeks) […]
Trainer’s Tip: Training Feedback Forms – Suggested Questions
Eddie Newall offers some suggestions under the headings of trainee job role, presentation, trainer, environment and outcome. Trainee Job Role:How relevant was this training to your current responsibilities?Irrelevant 1 2 3 4 5 Highly relevantComment: To what extent did this training meet your expectations?Not met 1 2 3 4 5 Fully metComment: Presentation: What was […]
Trainer’s Tip: Trainer – The Definition
Debra Smith offers her views on how to sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to identifying the genuine article from the cowboys. I think the actual terminology of ‘trainer’ conjures such a mixture of expectations that rarely do people know what they actually want, let alone what they get and as a […]
Trainer’s Tip: Training For The Unemployed
Rich Lucas offers Jane Morrison advice on how to package an innovative training programme for unemployed clients looking to enter the labour market with particular reference to the customer service and retail sectors. You may be doing this already but rather than just teaching skills throughout the training, build a plan of how it’s going […]
Trainer’s Tip: How to Effectively Chair Meetings
Adele Finnegan offers Buffy Sparks an exercise. I have found the following exercise to be very effective in running meetings workshops. 1. Split the group into teams of four to six people. 2. Each person has to pick a topic of their choice and prepare to facilitate a two minute discussion on that topic. 3. […]
Trainer’s Tip: Learning and Development KPIs
Lindsay Campbell gets feedback from Martin Schmalenbach on the hottest, learning and development performance indicators around. In generic terms I’d suggest a score card comprising the following categories – I’ve included a few example measures to give you an idea: 1. Results: return on investment, new behaviours being demonstrated. 2. Customers: satisfaction levels, percentage of […]
Trainer’s Tip: Training the Trainer with No Budget
Mike Morrison suggests ‘free’ ways to continue professional development. If you’ve been in training roles for a long time you may just need some ‘light’ refresher training – you can often get this by going to free presentations and watching and learning from others. Depending upon your skill base you may need to be ‘fed’ […]
Trainer’s Tip: Overcoming A Learning Block
Nik Kellingley suggests ways to help a trainee who just ‘doesn’t get it’. I like Mike’s idea of passing the buck back to the learner it’s a tactic I’ve used with success in the past. You could also see if their more succesful peers could help them to learn – sometimes it’s just you that’s […]
Trainer’s Tip: How Many Days Training Can You Do In A Week?
Mike Morrison explains the targets. As an independent 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 four days a week, every week this does sound a little excessive – however what else are you paid to do? […]
Trainer’s Tip: Dealing With Customer Complaints
Neil Wilkins outlines a plan. Hi Dyfrig, You mention that the team have had “generic knowledge in dealing with unhappy customers over the phone and in writing’ however that they need to ‘’up’ their performance in dealing with their customers” therefore would the team benefit from either sales and or customer loyalty training? Unless they […]
Trainer’s Tip: Trainer Freelancing – The ‘How To’
Gary Gorman shares his top tips. 1. As long as you’re prepared to work hard and be flexible you won’t regret it. 2. The best chance of work comes through personal recommendations, so network as much as possible. This is also the cheapest way to market yourself. 3. Think about your point of difference – […]
Trainer’s Tip: Assertiveness Warm-up/Energiser
Eddie Newall shares an idea. Ask them to identify a situation, from their own personal experience, in which they found it hard/easy to be assertive either outside or at work. Use the hard-to-be-assertive situations as problem-solving group work and feedback. Give them examples of situations, which involve some form of threat, together with one or […]
Trainer’s Tip: Preparation to Delivery Formula Revealed
Rus Slater unveils his formula for calculating the preparation time required per training session. Do you agree with him? Could you put together a concise training session following his preparation to delivery hours formula? I’ve only heard the 1:3 figure once; from a manager whose belief was …“Anyone can write a training course … just […]
Trainer’s Tip: Induction Icebreakers
Buffy Sparks explains the ‘two truths and one lie’ icebreaker. A really simple and old favourite of mine is to ask all the delegates to write two truths and one lie on a piece of A4 paper (its best if they all have the same pen colour) fold the paper four times and drop into […]
Trainer’s Tip: Life Lessons
Stephen Berry, Training Director for Neos Learning, offers some life lessons for success and happiness. Life is temporary, and there are more important things in it than work. Work must be enjoyable, fulfilling and emotionally rewarding. We all spend so much time and creativity within work, it is criminal if we do not enjoy it […]
Trainer’s Tip: Setting Up An Internal Training Programme
Kon Stoilas outlines a plan. There a seven main rules to creating a new internal training programme (ITP). 1. Are you competent enough to facilitate these subjects? If not, is there an internal person who can do this? If the answer is no, seek external help. 2. Use productivity/financial reports to determine where they are […]
Trainer’s Tip: Time Management For Trainers
Karen offers some energy tracking tips for effective time management. I’d like to add two more tips that have helped me but that are perhaps more in tune with an EQ mindset than an IQ one. Respect your energy flow – it’s true that you can often get more done in the time left after […]
Trainer’s Tip: Course Evaluation
Sarah Read explains why she wouldn’t use the tick box solution. There are lots of different types of evaluation. My key points would be: Only ask questions relating to areas you are prepared to change (for example, don’t ask about satisfactory venues etc if you can’t change locations.) Tick boxes provide quick fix answers, but […]
