Dear Izzy

We’ve had a few incidences recently of people being “too busy” to attend training. I’m also concerned that expensive training events being run are being spoilt by people arriving late, leaving early or popping out for “urgent” (quote) conference calls which the trainers are trying to manage as best they can. I am worried that, with a potential recession, not only will my job be at risk but that training budgets will be cut just when we need them to be maintained.

David, training manager.

I’d like to address this at two levels – strategically and tactically.

Training in the workplace is as important and valuable as ever. The recent ‘Best Companies To Work For’ in the Sunday Times showed how much importance staff placed on access to training and development. And there is still a shortage of talent available.

Are you really linking training to the specific goals of the business? What are the most critical issues facing your organisation? Discuss these with the senior management team so that every programme you run is measured and monitored against them. And look deeply – is it revenue or is it about profit? Is sickness absence the problem, or are managers avoiding those difficult conversations?

With one of our clients we looked at the real cost of recruitment mistakes. The company was losing people after six to nine months whether they were hired directly or through agencies. The reaction was to stop using agencies and “save money”. But we looked deeper: excluding agency fees and other direct costs, including salaries, the real cost was more than £20,000 per employee in lost time, opportunity and productivity. But no-one had done the maths until then.

A programme to address recruitment and selection, induction and line management training, as well as tighter supervision during the probation period, saved them hundreds of thousands of pounds. Managers who managed the induction process the best were coached to be coaches to others – sustaining the training and giving them a personal development opportunity.

But remember, in the words of Blackadder, it’s not enough to have a trumpet – you have to blow it, too. Here, the HR team reported the improvements and savings being made, monthly and quarterly. Despite cost-cutting by head office, the training budget was maintained.

Now to some tactical issues around time-keeping and commitment:

1. Are senior management really supportive? If they’re seen to duck out, others will follow. Introduce rules – if a delegate can’t substitute another to take their place, charge them. But it’s got to hurt. One company struggled for ages being nice and just cross-charging the fee – a new HR director then introduced a fivefold penalty, managed by finance and applied to the cost centre manager. Funny how quickly the problem cleared up…
2. Make sure your trainers are tough on timekeeping. Agree at the outset house rules on timekeeping. Get the group to manage it, and agree any penalties. Check to see if anyone has any conference calls booked – if they have to make them, tell them you won’t wait – and don’t!
3. At coffee or lunch, agree the number of minutes, tell the group to look at their own watch, Blackberry or mobile phone and add on that number of minutes. No excuse then that the clock in the training room was wrong…
4. Do a Brian Hanrahan – the Falkland Islands journalist who “counted them out and counted them back in” – and apply it to mobiles. When working in Malaysia last year, my colleague and I collected every mobile (some had three and a Blackberry) and kept them on a table at the front – at every break we counted them out and counted them back in. Worked a treat. Buy a timer – when the break is up, the bleeper goes off. I’ve seen grown men and women sprinting back when they hear the bleeper – it’s better than dog training.

Sometimes just a gentle reminder is needed. We build trust by doing what we say we will do. So how can we build trust if we’re late and we’ve agreed a time to meet? So whatever department your delegates work in, remind them of this simple fact – a gentle reminder goes a long way.

Isobel Rimmer is managing director of the Masterclass training company. She can be contacted on +44(0)1753 676666

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