Training Options

If your staff need training, you would normally have most of these choices:

Courses: Locally or nationally (involving travel). These will be delivered by reputable companies, who offer regular events. There is a very wide choice of providers for most subject areas.

You can also hire in a Trainer to run in-house courses. This means that to be viable you have to get a reasonable number on the course.

E-Learning: Delivery of fixed course material via the web, intranet or desktop. Best suited to IT skills and technical subjects. This can be very ecomomical if you can source the material, or very expensive if you want to set up your own library of courses.

Coaching: Regular advice, guidance and feedback from a person's manager. Economical and timely, provided the manager is not under too much pressure to contribute.

Mentoring: Similar to coaching but the Mentor is not in the same part of the organisation and may even belong to another company!

Direct Instruction: Needed for qualification based training as well as specialist in-company knowledge. Effectiveness depends on the skills of the instrucors and their availablility.

Personal Development: Let people manage their own training after agreeing a long term plan. This could be a combination of formal and informal training, together with planned experience.

Self Study: Short term self learning which could be computer or paper based. Success will depend to a great extent on both the motivation of the learner as well as the qulaity of the material.

Live web based training: This can be 1:1, for small groups and also in "webinar" format up to 100 and beyond. Sessions can be one off, or part of a longer series of development, including follow up ones as well.

Timing would be to suit individuals or groups.

Do nothing: This is the most economic option - in the short term. You need to work out how long you can do this before the consequences get serious.