Training courses – attending

TRADITIONALLY DEVELOPMENT OF staff was associated with attendance at a formally taught training course. Hopefully this book will have demonstrated that there are many other ways of developing staff, but formal training courses still have their place.

Monster (2016), the employment website, identifies formal training as bringing the following four main benefits to individuals, teams and organizations:

Broadly speaking, this type of training can be divided into internally and externally delivered courses. Some of the internally delivered courses may be mandatory and staff will have no choice as to whether or not to attend them. It is still important to discuss mandatory training with your staff to ensure that they have learned what they were supposed to learn and to feed back to the training providers any issues or unmet needs. With other types of internal training individuals will have the option to attend or not.

For both external and self-selecting internal courses, a discussion will need to take place between the staff member and you as the line manager to agree why the individual wants to attend the training. This discussion should include the benefits that the training will bring to the individual, the team and the organization. It is important to be clear about the time commitment required and how the learning will be applied after the course is completed. Some courses will require pre- or post-course work and arrangements will need to be made to accommodate this as appropriate.

There are often cost implications associated with this type of training. Some internal courses might be charged back to your training budget, depending on the system in operation at your organization. For many external courses, though not all, there will be a fee and there could also be associated travel and accommodation requirements, depending on the location and duration of the course. Training budgets in many organizations have been cut in recent years.