Training & Skills

Training Providers at Your Workplace

Training providers are companies and organisations that will deliver either set programmes or tailor-made training packages at your workplace.

Collectively they cover a huge range of subjects, both general and very specific, and employ a wide variety of techniques. A really good, inspirational trainer can have a major impact and very quickly improve skills and knowledge.

Many providers also offer the option of training at their facilities, but it can be more cost-effective to bring the trainer to you and your staff than vice versa.

The benefits

Because the training is tailored to your needs it is a very focussed way to rapidly develop ability. It isn't a low-cost option, but the benefits are:

• very fast up-skilling
• can be highly tailored
• convenience of delivery in the workplace
• potential to share the costs by involving other businesses

It is also possible that you may be able to obtain funding to offset some of the costs, contact your Skills Broker.

Identify your objectives

However, this type of training only works well if you are have clearly identified your objectives and your training needs. You must have a concrete idea of what you want your business to achieve through the training. For example, better business customer service, though a good aspiration, is too vague. What do you actually want? Better interpersonal skills for your front of house staff? Better telephone techniques? To get staff to understand why the customer needs to be at the centre of operations? Better use of technology to capture customer information? The more closely you can identify your objectives, the better.

What skills do you need to acquire? The skills gap

Once you know what you want the outcomes to be, you can work out what skills you need to achieve them. Then you need to see which skills you already have across your workforce, and which you lack. This is called a skills gap analysis and it really helps to inform what the content of the training will be.

Your Skills Broker will provide invaluable help in this area. It usually involves taking a survey of your skills and those of your staff, and investigating how people would like to develop. It can be a real eye-opener to discover what hidden talents your staff have, and to find out where they'd like to see themselves in the future.

Finding the right provider

The next step is to think about recruiting a training provider. Again, your Skills Broker will help you. Look for one that shows evidence of being able to meet the needs you've identified and of providing a quality service - details are in the next section. Recruiting the right training provider is, of course, essential to success and value for money.

Next step:

• Find your Tourism Skills Broker
• See Finding a Training Provider