TrainingZONE member Rich Lucas, Director and Training consultant of Supremacy training solutions offers some quick tips on how to get it right.
For those of you who are internal managers/co-ordinators or officers of training, raising and maintaining the profile of training and the importance of continuous learning is probably the bane of your life! I'm unsure why training seems to play second fiddle.
Surely as a business, professional or even as a human being, the need to learn on an ongoing basis is essential for personal growth, more business opportunities and ultimately, more money! Although few organisations see it this way, and it’s usually down to you to continually drive initiatives forward. Here are a few subtle (and not so subtle) strategies that you can use to raise the profile of training and development so let’s see if we can make it any easier for you.
Step 1 – Show the financial side:
Wherever you can, relate what you are doing in T&D to a quantifiable financial reason, this could be making or saving money, staff retention, reduced sickness, really look for one, make this visible.
Step 2 – Intranet site:
If your organisation has an intranet, insist on getting dedicated training pages on it. Use these pages for links to professional bodies, course schedules and outlines, self development material such as articles and other reading material. Put your company induction on here along with the relevant material.
Make sure the pages are presentable and there is a reason why staff would want to take a little time out of their day to visit your pages. Make sure intranet usage is covered in the induction.
Step 3 - Start a monthly newsletter:
Now, to start promoting anything is to firstly make it visible. Start writing a monthly newsletter about the training activity in your organisation. You can include professional qualifications successes, tutorial times, new initiatives, Good luck messages, quote of the month, advertising courses that are running etc. This drastically raises the profile of training.
Especially if you send it to everyone via e-mail, after the first four, it will be accepted.
Step 4 - Send out a weekly tip:
Choose a topic which is important to your organisation and scour the net/library/wherever for articles, pointers, top ten lists or anything that gives valuable information and send a tip every Monday morning to the managers/team leaders. You can change the topic depending on how the organisation needs change.
Step 3 - Be enthusiastic:
It goes without saying that you will need to 100% believe and champion training every single day.
Step 4 - Run short courses:
Advertise a 2/3 hour course on leadership aiming it at team leaders/managers, you'll get managers who'll come along, then absolutely over deliver on your performance, do this enough and you'll find these managers making good use of the training function!
For further information see www.supremacytraining.com or email info@supremacytraining.com
