Choosing The Scale Of Your Training

Many people consider "training" to involve groups of bored delegates being forced to take a course that is either mandatory or that they have been volunteered for - either way, they don't seem to enjoy being there because they haven't really been involved in the training decisions at management level. Here are some tips with how to look at training needs on different scales - for the individual, for the group, or for the whole company.

Individuals

Individual training usually comes about in two ways. The usual one is that it's requested by the individual who wants to learn a new skill, has identified a weakness in their talents, or wants to branch out to a different area of responsibility. As a manager, it should be part of their performance management that they receive support when asking for training - even if your company can't afford it and you have to turn the request down, you could compensate by perhaps letting them shadow someone for a week in the kind of role they are aspiring to, for example.

The other way that individual training comes about is also part of performance management, where it's the manager and not the individual who recognises that they are behind in a certain skill, and recommends training as part of supporting them being able to do their job to the best of their ability.

Groups

This is the most common form of training, but needs a lot more thought as a consequence. The temptation is to get a discount on bulk training by sending a whole team out for the day, as it will cost less and "get it all done" in one go.

However this may cause demotivaetd or disgruntled members of staff who don't need the training or have done it before, or if it's something they already know - they are not going to appreciate a refresher! Another caveat with group training is that it loses any of the advantage you get with identifying one on one training needs with an individual.

The happy medium to this is getting a professional training company to do a bespoke course, possible focusing on one or two elements that aren't normally in the syllabus but which have been requested by some staff.

Entire Companies

Finally, there is training for an entire company. The cheapest option per head because of the discount in bulk, but not often used unless you work in a very fast-moving field such as technology and software where some training will become obsolete after a few months.

If you want a company-wide rollout, then this needs careful consideration on how it's staged, and the speed at which it's delivered (you can't have half the departments in the company being up to speed on something while the others lag behind, since they will still have to work together as a whole for the customer). If you use group training a lot, you may want to make a deal with a training company on both the repeat business and the fact that you'll need training tailored to your company's image, brand and market arena.

For any kind of training, you'll need to research and choose a suitable training company. There are plenty online, but remember to pick and choose according to what your needs are, and how well they'll be accommodated, in order to have training success at every level.