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MANAGER’S BIBLE
“10 surefire tools, techniques and tips to solve your
common training problems”
by
Sean McPheat
http://www.m-t-d.co.uk
The Training Manager’s Bible
Contents Page
Introduction 3
About Us 5
Training and the organisation – where’s the fit and how does it 12
work?
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The Training Manager’s Bible
Introduction
I can assure you that no matter whether you are looking after a
multi-national training department or whether you are a small, close
knit team – all training managers face the same problems and
challenges.
Or was it?
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The outcome?
If you have got any questions or feedback I’d love to hear them.
Sean
Sean McPheat
Managing Director
Management Training & Development Ltd
Web
http://www.m-t-d.co.uk
Email
sean.mcpheat@m-t-d.co.uk
Switchboard
0800 849 6732
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MTD, the management training specialists, has been working with a wide variety
of clients (both large and small) in the UK and internationally for several years.
We specialise in providing:
Our team of highly skilled and experienced trainers and consultants have all had
distinguished careers in senior management roles and bring with them a wealth
of practical experience to each course.
At Management Training & Development Ltd we will design and deliver a solution
that suits your specific needs addressing the issues and requirements from your
training brief that best fits your culture, learning style and ways of working. Our
programmes are delivered when and where you need them!
We believe that training should be fun, highly interactive and provide “real world”
practical techniques and methods that you can use back in the office – and that’s
exactly what we provide.
Location: Business Innovation Centre, Binley Business Park, Harry Weston Road
Warwickshire, CV3 2TX
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Our Clients
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Over the years, our work has brought us into contact with many
training managers and we are often asked what skills and attitudes
would contribute to excellence in the role.
Give yourself an honest score out of 10, for the items in the
following list and determine where it would be most beneficial to
improve. (10 means you have no improvement to do whatsoever)
Be specific. Be honest.
After that, draw up a plan that will improve your skills or knowledge
in that key area.
Prioritise your list so that you spend quality time on areas that will
show the best results.
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Too often, when the pressure is on, training is one of the first
activities to be reviewed.
How can you create programmes that link in with the values of the
company?
By determining these gaps and creating the steps that are needed
to fill them, you establish credibility in your training department at
an important level.
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• Ask your directors exactly what their expectations are for the
next year, two years, and five years.
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So how do you make sure the rest of the business knows what you
do?
To make sure everyone knows the value you offer, get them
involved at each stage of the process.
• Stakeholder analysis
• Balanced scorecard
• Performance scorecard
With the stakeholder analysis, you add credibility for your training
department by achieving a sense of purpose and a clarity of
aims.
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Answering these questions will help you decide on actions that will
support the business needs. You build credibility by providing
those actions.
It’s a great way of proving your worth and getting people to support
you.
Having done the stakeholder analysis, you can divide the necessary
actions into manageable categories to create a balanced scorecard.
• Financial
• Customers
• Internal needs
• People
For instance, for finance, you’ll consider turnover, profit and costs.
Can you see how such a process would increase your credibility
within the business?
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You need to show your credibility every time you have contact with
other departments.
Give them reasons to choose you. Make them realise that you have
skills and attributes that other companies don’t have.
That way, you will stand out as a department that is valuable and
productive to your company.
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The same should be true for your training. Without a firm plan,
you’re risking building on sand, and the results will be more from
luck than judgement.
It's not important to stick to the plan for the sake of the plan. The
plan will likely change as you go along. That's fine, as long as you
have notice that it's been changed and why.
1. Are there any time lines that you should consider in your
plan?
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By now, you should have a strong sense of what your training goals
are, after having considered each of the above steps.
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What tools can you use to actually put the plan together?
Activities Tools
• Understand the trainee’s job. • Job description
Identify the essential and • Job profile
desirable job skills that affect • Knowledge, skills and
performance and results attitudes required to do the
job
• Assess the trainee’s skills, • Interviews, discussions,
attributes, experience, listening skills, learning styles
situations and learning styles questionnaire
• Identify and agree • Develop TNA
development priorities
• Assess skill needed to do job. • Manuals, standards, company
Agree current abilities of policies
people to be trained in each • Skills assessment sheets
skill
• Identify and agree tasks, • Task delegation form
activities, exercises to train • Other trainers, courses,
each element to the required external resources
standard
• Implement, follow up and • Feedback sheets
review. Measure, record and • Appraisals
support. Adjust, prioritise and • Interviews
review again • Job assessments
- your training goals will provide the results desired by you and the
organisation
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Ask yourself:
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But it’s only enough to make you tear your hair out!
How can you make a big impact with a limited budget for
developing your staff?
Firstly, make sure that the budget you’ve been set is REALLY all
that’s available.
You can then explain the consequences and long-term side effects
of the implications of cutting the training budget.
Make sure you’ve got all your ducks in a row here. You can quote
figures to determine the effects, but do your homework first. It will
sound like you’re just whinging if you complain without
essential back-up information.
If that still fails, discuss the situation with your training team and
plan how you might be able to achieve a higher figure. Others may
have ideas that you hadn’t considered.
Let’s assume that there’s no change, and you’ve got to live with it.
One area you can look at is how communication with staff occurs at
the moment.
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Check out the new methods of training that can provide excellent
learning opportunities in much shorter time periods.
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Delegates save time while learning more in their own learning style,
and you save money by reducing the amount of time everything
takes.
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For example:
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• The training provider has a proven track record in the area they
are training in
• The course objectives are more likely to be achieved with a
packaged course
• By using outside companies, it frees up your time to create
courses only you can design – specific for your business
• The course has already been developed, so the cost is usually
less than developing a course yourself
• You receive support from the designers and tutors of the course
• The quality of delivery is maintained through the continual
development of the trainers delivering the programme
• It’s more cost effective to buy a course that fits your needs
The proof often is not forthcoming until way after the event. So
determine whether the outside supplier can meet your needs with a
series of thought-starters:
• How much does the training company know about the subject
you wish them to train?
• Have they worked with your industry/business before?
• How will they measure the success of any programme they run
with you?
• Can you work with them during the preparation stages to
determine the learning points are relevant to your trainees?
• How much of the material is off-the-shelf and how much of it is
bespoked?
• Do you need a generic programme or does it need to be specific
to your needs?
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The answers to such questions will guide you toward the right
external training suppliers.
Remember – every one of them will say they can deliver; go with
your gut feeling as well as common-sense to tell you how effective
they will be.
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Organisational data
These figures are useful in that they provide an objective figure that
can be specifically measured. However, you might assume that
deteriorating figures indicate training needs, when this might not be
the case.
Focus Groups
The group can quickly give you feedback on major issues and the
synergies created can be worth the time taken to hold such a
meeting.
Interviews
Face to face and phone interviews can give you more background to
situations.
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cause that is creating the poor figures. Interviews will help you
explore the current working practices and skill gaps.
Workplace observation
Depending on your expertise and skill levels, you can pick up a lot
of information in a short time by watching people perform their
roles in a ‘normal’ environment.
Tests
Questionnaires
To make sure you achieve results from your analysis quickly and
effectively, ensure you do the following:
By doing the above, you will find you have a much better chance of
getting necessary training needs information quickly and effectively.
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At the end of the day, it will be the learner’s ROI that is most
valuable.
What to train: what skills are needed to meet current and future
business goals?
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The first step in measuring ROI is to itemise costs. Once costs are
determined the various benefits can be counted. By doing this, you
can prove to your managers that the work you do is vital and
effective:
- Application
- Cost assessment
- Benefit assessment
- Evaluation
Here you define the reasons and goals for the training. Typically,
objectives for training projects are diverse and can include
increased productivity, reduction of errors and improved employee
retention.
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2. Application
3. Cost assessment
What was the total cost of the course? And trainer development,
programme materials, instructor/facilitator, facilities,
travel/lodging/meals and administration?
4. Benefit assessment
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such a number does not exist internally, external studies and expert
opinion can be sources for the data.
If the measures have been taken before the project began these
can be more than just estimates.
6. Evaluation
Ask the users, ask their managers, and ask the technical team. And
if enough people tell you the training made the difference and
allowed them to hit a business target they’ve never hit before, take
pride in what the training has achieved and report it.
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We also ask the trainees opinion of where they see their strengths
and weaknesses before the training and what they find most
difficult to do.
Then the training event occurs. Immediately after the course we ask
for the trainees perception of how better or worse prepared they are
to deliver superior levels of customer satisfaction than they were
before
3 months down the line we ask for this perception again plus we get
feedback on them from their line manager with regards to specific
behaviours associated with delivering customer service excellence.
Conclusion
The more detailed the evaluation, the more information you will
have on whether the training is working well and if not, why not?
This will help you make informed decisions on which programmes to
continue, and give you a better idea of the potential of future
programs. However, evaluations do take planning, time, and
money. You may not be able to perform a full ROI on every skills
development activity you undertake, but it’s worth choosing to do it
on the big ones. In the final analysis, in an era of budget-cutting,
training managers who can talk to their directors about ROI will
stand a better chance of maintaining a skills and learning
development strategy.
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There are lots of web-sites that support the training field – many
offer free subscriptions to newsletters that keep you in touch with
new training developments. When you come across a new idea,
investigate it. See if it offers new opportunities to adapt your
current training offerings. Keep an open mind and determine if it
would be worth finding out more about new training ideas or
processes. Become curious. Ask what you personally can learn from
finding out new information. So subscribe to as many web-sites
as possible – just go through your favourite search engines and
you’ll be amazed how much depth there is out there
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You know what will happen if you do the opposite – there’s no doubt
that negative people’s attitude will rub off on you – don’t let others
control how you will create a legacy for yourself.
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“If only there was an owner’s manual to help us run our training
team!”
The situation becomes worse when you have just started your role!
So, let’s see if we can give you a TOP 5 list of what to do to make
your life a lot easier and make your team more effective.
Unless you have got the “business” and the “managers” on your
side you will find it difficult to run an effective team.
Instead you will be too busy worrying about whether your ideas will
be accepted by the business rather than just focusing on what you
need to do to make a difference to the business.
I have seen so many TM’s talk a good game but sadly they are
missing the most important element – ACTION!
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It might be asking Granny to suck eggs but are you really focusing
on the essential training requirements of the business or are you
skirting around what really needs to be done because:
For example I have seen Computer Based Training work really well
when you have got some basic knowledge and skills that you need
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to train the workforce on. This works especially well when you have
got multiple sites. The content may not be the most “sexiest” to
teach in a classroom environment - for example, such topics could
include WORD and Excel.
One vital area that I see neglected in 90% of the Training Managers
that I know is your own self-development!
You not only have to manage the business but you also have to
manage your team as well as yourself and hence you need a wide
variety of specialist skills to do yourself justice.
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However, not all people have this opinion and sometimes it can get
you down.
This is understandable!
Not everyone has the ability to shape and help someone with their
own skills and development. At the end of the day you are having
an impact not only on the business but on a lot of lives in general as
well and it is easy to forget that fact.
What you do for a living has more far reaching affects than the 95%
of other professions and for that I salute you!
I hope you enjoyed this special report and if you ever need any help
with any of your training requirements or are looking for an external
training supplier, why not give us a try?
Sean McPheat
http://www.m-t-d.co.uk
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