Professional Documents
Culture Documents
FOR
TRAINING
MANAGERS
INTRODUCTION
TRAINING MANAGEMENT
The training manager’s role can be broken down broadly into a number of
different areas:
In the chapters that follow, each of these areas will be dealt with in detail
and will be interpreted as they relate to small-scale voluntary groups.
Chapter 1
Assessing
Training
Needs
INTRODUCTION
Assessing needs can be a tricky business. Obviously the trainee will have
some idea about their own needs, but they may not be sufficiently well
informed to make sound judgements. They may have either an overly low
or high opinion of their own abilities. They almost certainly will not have an
extensive knowledge of the labour market or education system.
For instance, a wide age range within a group may create problems in
technological subject areas where younger members of a group may feel
more at home and wish to progress at a faster rate than the older
members. Again, particularly with things like studio training there is a
strong argument that women tend to be marginalized and perform better
in single sex groups. Women - particularly single mothers - may have
childcare concerns, which need to be planned for. People who are working
will have different needs to those who are unemployed.
Much of this may seem obvious - tell that to the person who organnised
recruitment interviews for a group of Orthodox Jews late on a Friday
afternoon!
Before you can begin to plan a training programme you will need to
answer this question. Although it may be possible to make certain
assumptions about who your trainees will be, you should still think it
through to make sure you haven’t overlooked some small but vital detail.
• How Many?
How many people need training and what sort of group size is appropriate?
Is there a maximum number you can deal with because of equipment and
resources?
Are the trainees all roughly the same age? If not, what is the age range?
How might the age of the participants influence the training?
Are you dealing with mixed gender groups? Is this desirable? What effect
might this have on the training? Are there any factors in the training
programme, which will unduly favor or disadvantage one sex?
Are the trainee’s unemployed, working or a mixture of both? Will the timing
or structure of the course adversely affect employed or unemployed
people? Does the timetable accommodate shift workers or low paid
workers who cannot take leave?
You may not always need to sit down and work through these questions in
a formal way but they should always be running through your mind during
the planning stage of any programme of training. You cannot always
produce perfection but you should be able to show that you have
considered all the issues and be prepared to justify your decisions.
In other situations - and this may often be the case in C.R. organisations -
training will be designed and customized for a particular group of people
who share common needs. Group sizes are likely to be smaller and much
more attention can be given to individual needs.
Clients or individual trainees will have ideas of their own about what
training they need and why. Their analysis may or may not be correct. As
training managers, the participants may also have their own favored cure-
all solutions, which do not take account of the trainee or client’s views, or
needs.
Before you can plan what training needs to be provided you will need to
have a clear understanding of why training is required. An individual or
group may require training because advances in technology are making
their existing skills redundant, or they may lack the necessary basic skills
to take advantage of local employment opportunities in a particular
industry. They may be seeking social improvements for their community
but needs skills training to achieve their goal.
What is the eventual goal they wish to achieve? Does this seem
realistic? Can you negotiate a more realistic approach? Are they
being unduly pessimistic? Could they aim higher? Can you
suggest alternative means of achieving the same or similar goal
by a different method?
What is the skills gap which prevents the goal being achieved?
Can this gap realistically be bridged?
• Negotiate
Some factors may prevent access to training in the first place, some may
prevent effective learning and others may undermine the overall
effectiveness of the training.
Some factors may be outside the direct control of either the trainee or the
training manager - being matters of national policy or social attitude.
Others certainly are controllable and, by considering them as part of a
needs assessment, they can be planned for and their effects minimized.
By the end of this section the participants should be aware of how many
complex factors may interact to undermine the effectiveness of training.
They should be able to use this awareness, as part of training needs
assessment in order to pan courses of training, which minimize their
effects.
Many factors can prevent access to training, prevent people from learning
effectively or undermine the effectiveness of training:
Political factors
• Lack of provision
• Lack of funding
• Institutional racism
Financial factors
• High fees
• Unavailability of grants or subsidy (also political)
• Timing conflicts with work or childcare (also organizational)
• Loss of benefits
Organizational factors
Personal factors
Every learning method has advantages and disadvantages and not all
learning methods will be equally effective for every member of a group, no
matter how similar the needs of the individuals may seem.
Highly structured. One or more tutors with expertise in the subject and
experience in teaching. May involve both theory and practical sessions.
Students have access to a variety of material but they are free to choose
their own speed and way of working.
Advantages: Students are free to learn at their own pace and to spend
more time on the areas they find most difficult. Good where the training
needs of a group of students is quite diverse.
Advantages: Very good for more advanced students who are well
motivated and can set themselves clear goals and are capable of solving
problems on their own.
Distance Learning
Students are provided with learning materials and resources and are given
a highly structured plan of study to follow. Work usually takes place in the
Student’s own home. The student is free to arrange when they study
although a minimum amount of time will be needed to complete the
structured course work. Some tutor support may be available by telephone
or occasional meeting.
Advantages: Fits very well with the needs of working people. Gives some
of the advantages of open learning with the structure of a more formal
approach.
Coaching
Advantages: The student has the undivided attention of the tutor who
can respond immediately to their learning needs. The student is given
confidence because of the amount and quality of time that is going into
their training.
Job Shadowing
Advantages: Puts the subject of skill into its practical context. The
student has the advantage of being able to ask questions of someone who
has developed their own working practices and applied theoretical
concepts in the real world.
Work Experience
Learning by doing the job yourself under the careful supervision of a more
experienced person.
Advantages: Learning by doing can be the best way to acquire practical
skills. Being in a working environment helps to put the skills and
knowledge into context. Work experience can offer a greater range of
opportunities to repeat tasks, which may be complex or difficult to grasp.
The purpose of skills training is to get trainees to a level where they can
perform a desired function competently. It is important that the
participants have clear understanding of this. Unless they have undergone
a period of training themselves, participants are most likely to be familiar
with the school examination system. Examinations do not assess
competence because they only measure performance on one special
occasion - i.e. the exam. Competence is about repeatability over time.
Competencies
Define the elements of the job which, after training, a trainee must be
capable of carrying out correctly on a routine basis with minimal or no
supervision. In order to be competent in performing an element of a job a
person will need to acquire core skills, supporting skills and knowledge. For
example, in order to be competent at radio interviewing a trainee will
require the core skills of handling a portable tape recorder and a
microphone, they will require supporting inter-personal skills for dealing
with interviewees and they will need the knowledge to ask intelligent and
carefully structured questions.
Core Skills
Define the core skills required i.e. those skills that are essential to carrying
out the
Define the other skills which, whilst not immediately required to perform a
task, may be necessary in the overall context of this occupation e.g. it is
not necessary to understand French to be able to skilfully edit audio tape
with a razor blade. However, it would be almost impossible to work for a
French radio service without a good grasp of the language.
Knowledge
Define the knowledge required to make intelligent use of the skills and
competences. The amount and breadth of knowledge required will depend
on the level and complexity of the skill area. People who are training for
managerial or supervisory roles, or for occupations where they will be
required to perform complex tasks with little supervision, will require a
greater breadth and range of knowledge than those who will be carrying
out simple tasks under close supervision.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Not a very good method for assessing skills where repeatability over time
is more important than exceptional performance on one or few occasions.
Advantages
Disadvantages
The purpose of this section is to guide the participants through the basic
steps of course design. Work on this section should be linked to an exercise
in real course design either set by you or suggested by the participant.
Many, if not all, the participants will be trainers and it is quite easy for
them to get bogged down in details of course content - this is the area in
which they will feel most at ease - instead of designing the framework
which supports it.
Content matters - of course - but in the context of this section they must
be encouraged to look at all the issues of learning requirements, learning
methods, assessment and resources.
Chapter 3
Planning and
Coordinating
Resources
Types of resources
The effective delivery of training will require resources. These can broadly
be broken down into three categories:
Financial resources
Physical resources
Physical resources are the tangible items necessary for effective delivery of
the training. Physical resources could be a training room or studio, the
equipment in it and special training equipment like a flip chart or overhead
projector. Some of these resources may already exist or be available at no
cost or they may have to be purchased, rented or borrowed.
Human resources
1. Budgeting
Always remember that the purpose of a budget is to make sure that you
have recognized and taken into account every cost associated with the
training. This is not necessarily the same information you will pass on to
the client or customer in the form of a quotation. Where you are providing
training on a strictly commercial basis, you are not under any obligation to
disclose your costs. But the customer has the right to accept or reject your
price and you would be well advised to do some research into what your
competitors charge.
Local Authorities, the European Commission and most other public funders
will require you to disclose your costs in considerable detail and you should
take advice on producing budgets for these bodies
Costs of Sales
I have used the expression sales to cover any situation where you are
providing a service and somebody is paying for it. This may be the trainee
or it may be a funder. In preparing a budget you must take into account all
the costs associated with the training you are planning - i.e. the service
you are selling. They could be items such as:
Tutor fees
Equipment hire
Purchase of materials
Travel costs
Overhead costs
Overheads are fixed costs. They remain virtually the same no matter how
much or how little work you do.
Costs of Sales will vary in direct proportion to the amount of sales you get.
If you get no sales, you have no costs!
Break-even Point
Whatever you decide to charge for the training you are going to provide, it
must at least cover both the overheads and the costs of sales. This is
break-even point. If you charge more you are in profit, charge less and you
make a loss.
Forecasting
Insurance 1,000
Telephone 1,200
TOTAL 32,000
At the start of the year you will need to make a forecast (educated guess)
about how much work you will do that year - the volume of sales. Say, for
example, you decide that your working year is 50 weeks long (taking off
Christmas and New Year) and that, on average, you will get three days
work per week. That gives you a total of 150 days in the year from which to
recover your overhead costs (see below)
This means that if your forecast is accurate and you really do get three
days work per week you will break even if you charge £213 pounds per day
plus the costs of sales. This is just one rather crude way of arriving at a
figure - there are many others.
It may seem a strange thing to say but, even if your organisation is non
profit -making, it still needs to make a profit. The difference between what
it costs you to provide your service and what you charge the customer is
your gross profit. The gross profit must at least cover the overheads or you
will make a loss. Net profit, the stuff that businesses make, is any money
that is still left over after you have recovered the overheads.
Total 180.00
If we add this to our £213 overheads we get a daily rate of £393. Let’s
round this off to a comfortable £400 per day.
Four hundred pounds per day is what we need to charge to both cover the
cost of providing the training and our overheads.
Let’s look at this the other way round for a moment. Out of £400 pounds
for a day’s training, £180 is the cost of providing it. So £220 is our gross
profit. If £220 out of every £400 is profit then our gross profit margin is:
A gross profit margin of 55% will, on our forecast, just allow us to cover the
overheads.
Turnover
Turnover is the total value of sales. In the example above, if we sell 150
days training at £400 per day we will turn over £60,000 in the year.
Turnover is not the same as profit. Of this £60,000 - based on our
estimates - only 55% or £33,000 is gross profit.
A forecast is an educated guess. It is very unlikely that things will turn out
exactly as you predict. Overhead costs may rise unexpectedly or you may
get less work.
To continue with our example, if instead of averaging three days work each
week we only get two and a half. The gross profit on this would be:
But our overheads for the year remain at £32,000. This would mean a loss
of £4,500.
Increase Turnover
You can try to get more work (increase the volume of sales) and
so increase your turnover.
Increasing your price - charge more per day for your service
It is very important that you keep a constant check on how close you are
keeping to your budget all through the year.
2. Cashflow
Cashflow is the name given to the flow of money into and out of your
organisation. A cashflow forecast is a way of predicting the flow of cash
and a useful tool in spotting cashflow problems.
The two charts show the predicted cashflow for the first two years of a
small organisation. The figures are based on the examples we used earlier.
Look at year one.
Income
The top, income, section of the forecast shows the predicted income each
month for each source. The figures are based on our earlier sales forecast
but you can see immediately that the total sales for the year come to
£51,120 not £60,000 as budgeted and there are no sales shown for January
or February.
There will always be a delay between doing the work and getting paid. I
have added in some small amounts of other income which might be
donations or other small sales.
Expenditure
The expenditure section shows all the expected outgoings and when they
will be paid. Wages have to be paid every month. Insurance premiums are
usually paid in one amount. Telephone bills are paid every quarter, as is
the rent. You will notice that there are no tutor fees for January. This
assumes that tutors invoice at the end of each month and will get paid at
the start of the next. So January tutor fees are paid in February.
Now look at the bottom section of the chart. The opening balance is the
amount you have in the bank at the start of the month. So in January we
start with nothing! The closing balance is the amount we should have in
the bank at the end of the month. The closing balance is worked out by
taking away the total expenditure from the total income and adding it to
the opening balance.
And this is where the trouble starts. Numbers in brackets are minus
amounts. So, at the end of January we are overdrawn at the bank by
£4,400. And it gets worse. Every month until May we are spending more
than we are receiving in income. The overdraft goes on getting bigger.
Now look along the closing balance line right through year one and year
two. It’s not until September of year two that we come out of overdraft.
Working Capital
Look at the next two charts. The figures are exactly the same except that
in January of year one we receive a start-up grant of £10,000. Now the
cashflow works correctly and we stay out of trouble with the bank.
Over trading
As well as doing cashflow forecasts at the start of the year you should also
keep a check on actual cashflow and compare it with your forecasts. If it
turns out that you are getting more work than you anticipated this is fine -
up to a point. It is possible though, to get too much work.
As we saw previously if you don’t have working capital you can end up in
serious trouble with the bank. The same applies if you start to get
significantly more work than you planned for. More work means more
income - eventually. But you will also have higher costs and you will incur
the cost before you enjoy the income. This situation is called over trading -
trading beyond the level your working capital can support. It is one of the
easiest and most dangerous traps to fall into.
• Think carefully about all your costs. Have you accounted for
everything?
• Have you thought about all your overheads?
• Are your sales forecasts realistic. It is better to under rather than over
estimate.
• Is your price reasonable. What about the competition?
• Are you relying on favours and special deals which you won’t be able
to sustain in the long term?
• Have you considered when you will get paid and when you will have
to pay your bills?
• How much working capital do you need? Does this allow for possible
increases in business?
• Do your plans allow for the unexpected?
3.1b SOURCES OF FUNDING
The aim of the following section is to introduce the participants to the main
sources of funding which are currently available for training. The access
that individuals or organisations may have to these sources will obviously
vary. The mains point to communicate are that funders or financiers of
training have their own needs and their own agendas. Successful funding
bids rely on accurately matching the funders criteria to the needs of the
project.
Participants should be made aware that funding can seriously damage your
project by forcing compromise and change in order to meet the funding
criteria.
1. Private sources
Banks.
If the amount of the loan is large or the bank thinks you are a
risky proposition they will ask for security i.e. the deeds to your
house, so that if you don’t pay up they get to sell your home!
The bank - however nice they may seem - is in it for the money.
When things don’t work out don’t expect them to be
sympathetic to your organisation’s aims.
Private investors.
2. Charitable Trusts
There are many thousands of charitable trusts both in the U.K. and abroad
which make donations to charitable organisations who do work they wish
to support. Individual trusts may give donations ranging from a few
hundred to many hundreds of thousands of pounds in a year. Trusts usually
give clear guidelines on the types of activity they will support and the size
of grants they will make. A Directory of Grant Making Trusts is published
regularly and is available from reference libraries. It gives brief details of
each trust usually with an address and contact name.
Many trusts will only give to registered charities. If your organisation is not
a registered charity or cannot be registered you may not be eligible for
grants.
Some trusts will only give for capital items like equipment or
buildings. Others will only fund running costs. Make sure you are
asking the right trust for the right thing.
Be specific about what you want the money for and how
this is meets the aims of the trust. Make it interesting
and exciting (but don’t go over the top).If the trust provides
guidelines on how to apply, use them. Don’t send
mountains of information if all they want is a single sheet of
A4.Trusts will usually want to see accounts for the previous year
or a business plan if you are just starting up. They will also want
a copy of your constitution or memorandum and articles of
association. Make sure you have these available. Provide a
contact name, address and daytime phone number and make
sure the person on the end of the phone is qualified to talk for
your organisation.
Some companies, mostly the large ones, support charities and non profit-
making organisations either through sponsorship or direct donation.
Sponsorship
Secondly, the sponsor will have access to the event itself which
means that important clients can be entertained at major
sporting and cultural events. A very high proportion of
audiences at the Royal Opera House and at Wimbledon are
being entertained by a sponsor.
Corporate donations
4. Public Sources
SRB has replaced all other central government funds for urban
regeneration. Local authorities and other regeneration agencies
can bid for SRB funding. Proposals for SRB funding must be very
well researched and supported by labor market information. The
emphasis is on encouraging new employers into areas in need
of regeneration and on packages of training advice and business
support.
Central Government
5. National Lottery
The aim of this section is to help the participants focus on the physical
resource implications of a scheme of training. Physical resource
requirements break down into three areas; environment (where the
training takes place), equipment and materials.
Any or all of these may either be permanently available or they may have
to be bought, rented leased etc.
The voluntary sector is used to begging and borrowing to get by but this is
not a very practical approach if training is to be sustained in the long term.
Participants should be encouraged to look at their resource requirements
and to devise a solution which produces the best possible result for the
trainees at the lowest possible cost whilst being sustainable over time.
Neat trick!
Physical Resources
Physical resources are all the things - buildings, equipment, materials etc. -
that you will need to successfully deliver training.
Physical resources have a direct relationship with the quality and outcome
of the training. You should consider:
o Environment
o Access to equipment
o Sufficient materials
Purchased items are always available to you but you must pay for them in
advance and whether you use them or not.
Rented items are paid for only when they are needed but they may not
always be available at short notice or when you need them.
Leasing is a bit like long term rental. The item is available all the time but
you have to keep paying for it whether you use it or not.
Loaned items cost you nothing but may not always be available
Notes to trainer
Human Resources
The people who provide and organise training have a profound effect on it.
Often a good trainer can make up for other shortcomings but the people
who manage and administer the training are of equal importance.
Before you can begin to recruit staff you will need to consider how you will
break down the various tasks into job roles. This will involve thinking about
not just the delivery of the training but things like:
This process is sometimes called job analysis and the purpose of doing it is
to produce job descriptions for the posts you will need to fill.
If you have past experience of the type of job and the type of organisation
for which you are recruiting, you may be able to produce a job description
with comparatively little effort. However, you might wish to ask other,
similar organisations about their staff structure or observe for yourself
whether they work or not.
Job Descriptions
Once you have a clear idea about how many people you need to employ
and what you need then to do, you can write this down in the form of job
descriptions.
A job description should clearly set out the purpose of the job and give a
list of all the things the person holding this job will be required to do and
the level of skill required. The list may be either of specific tasks which the
person must carry out, or of responsibilities.
Person Specification
The job description defines the job with its tasks and responsibilities. A
person specification is a collection of attributes that a person will need to
possess (or not possess) in order to carry out the job. This can be much
harder to define.
A useful approach can be to write down lists of things which are essential,
things which are desirable, things which are undesirable and things which
disqualify.
Essential
Desirable
Undesirable
These may be personal attributes such as smoking or other
antisocial habits but you may not regard as undesirable factors
such as gender or race. It is at present legal to take age into
account.
Disqualify
Recruitment and selection are the parts of the process of employing people
where things are most likely to go wrong. Often this is because all the
effort that went into preparing the job description and person specification
is wasted because neither is used as part of the selection process.
Recruitment
Recruitment is the process of getting suitable people to apply for your job.
In a large organisation some candidates may be internal i.e. people already
working for the organisation in another capacity. You may chose to
advertise externally in newspapers and magazines likely to be read by the
sort of people you wish to attract. Or you may chose to use an agency such
as the Job Centre or private employment agency. Schools, colleges and
universities can also be sources of applicants.
You should consider whether your choice for publicising the job vacancy
will produce enough suitable applicants - or perhaps too many. Does your
choice advantage or disadvantage certain groups of people?
Screening
If the recruitment has been successful you will probably have applications
from many more people than you could possibly interview. Some process
of selection must therefore be used before you get to the interview stage.
This first selection is likely to rule out a very large number of applicants.
Shortlisting
The application form or C.V. can now be used for a second stage of
selection by comparing each applicant with the list of desirable and
undesirable attributes from the person specification. The people who best
fit the specification can be invited for interview.
Interviewing
The interview must be fair for all candidates. Interviewers are human and
therefore subject to personal preferences and prejudices. It is quite likely
that an interviewer will have a picture in their mind of the ideal candidate -
probably someone just like them.
Interview panels
Questioning
Answer Scoring
Fairness
Any method of recruitment or selection should operate fairly for all people.
This is not only true on a moral basis but, in some circumstances, a matter
of law. British Law makes it illegal to discriminate on the grounds of race or
sex except under certain very clearly defined circumstances.
Types of contributor
• An Internal Trainer
• An External Trainer
• A Practitioner
Someone who has broad experience of working in the skill area being
taught but who may not have experience as a trainer.
• A Topic Expert
Someone with expert knowledge in one area of the subject. They may or
may not have experience as a trainer
i.e. The Trainees, the trainers, work experience providers and the training
manager.
• What each contributor will cover and how the contributions relate to
each other.
• The competence of each contributor to make their contribution.
by interviewing them
It would be wise to draw up a contract which specifies all the above. i.e.:
• Role
• Input
• Training method
• Outcome
• Evaluation
• Fee
Chapter 4
Evaluating
the Quality
of Training
INTRODUCTION
Quality assessment must be built into the training from the outset and the
ways in which the success or failure of the programme will be judged must
be clear to all concerned.
Subjective criteria are quite easy to grasp and will probably be quite
familiar to participants. However, objective methods of evaluation such as
performance indicators can be problematic and may require additional
time and attention.
It is vital that the participants grasp two key concepts. Firstly that the
scope of evaluation should take in all the organisational and resources
aspects of the training and not just the content, and secondly that
evaluation is part of the design stage of a training programme, not
something which is grafted on afterwards.
Why Evaluate?
Evaluation which only highlights the positive and ignores the negative is of
no use in developing quality over time.
• The Trainees
• The Trainers
• The Training Manager
• The Client (if applicable)
The method and scope of the evaluations must be decided before training
begins. After all, it would hardly be fair if two teams played a game which
they thought was football only to be told afterwards that the referee
thought it was hockey and actually they were playing cricket anyway! The
rules must be clear to everyone from the start.
Objective
• Performance indicators
Performance indicators are objective measures of success of the
programme i.e: how many trainees actually achieved a qualification
against how many were expected to.
• Evaluation criteria
Subjective
How do the trainees feel about the training? What do they think they
learned or achieved and how does this compare with their expectations?
This information may be gathered verbally or by means of a formal
feedback questionnaire.
Where training is being carried out for a client. their view is important too.
Chapter 5
Administration
&
Record Keeping
Notes to the trainer:
Types of record
• Trainee details
• Attendance
Attendance records show which students attended when and for how long.
This may be in the form of a simple attendance record or register which
has a space to tick for each student and each day they attended.
Increasingly funders require more detail than this and an accurate record
of the hours of attendance of each trainee is required. One form of keeping
this type of record is a time sheet. Each trainee has a weekly time sheet on
which is recorded the days and times they attended. Each week the sheet
is signed both by the trainee and the trainer to agree the number of hours.
Over the weeks the totals from the time sheets can be added up to give
the total hours of attendance for each trainee.
• Allowances
Trainees may be paid allowances for travel or food whilst training. Many
funders will not reimburse these allowances unless details of the actual
expense are kept. In general you should not pay out flat rate allowances
but require trainees to produce tickets or receipts for the actual expense
they have incurred. An accurate record of all payments should be kept. A
weekly expense form for each trainee is a useful way of doing this. The
trainee should sign each week to acknowledge receipt of the cash.
• Progress