The Workforce

Even the best can be better – how to create relational training for staff

It is important to keep learning and growing. Recognise your staff’s value and expertise by developing internal training and discussion sessions. Enable staff to learn and train more. Training should not be a tick-box exercise but a place for growth and reflection.

Change, growth, and development do not happen overnight. They take time, investment, and patience. It can be difficult to prioritise learning when workloads are high, and daily task and needs are barely met. Stressed individuals do not learn.

However, sometimes carving out some time to learn, study and dive deeper can actually help in realigning priorities and managing workload. Rather than chasing the never-ending to-do list, deciding to stop and learn can create some much-needed inspiration.

Of course, balancing demands is a tricky thing to do, which is why organisations need to give permission to staff to identify their own needs and take the time for growth.

Training can take various forms; it can be a seminar style session with 5 to 10 people and adapted examples, or it can be a conference for hundreds of people with more generic (but not less valuable) teaching. Training can also be individually or informally between two or three colleagues. It can be planned or ad-hoc.

However, training needs place, it can serve the purpose of teaching something new, consolidating something recently learnt or refreshing long-known knowledge.

Each form of training serves it purpose and people might respond better to one form or another. Therefore, training should be offered in accordance to people’s needs and wishes.

It can be hard to take the time, but this can be influenced by the organisation culture. It does not hurt to actively encourage people to take time for trainings and even set reminders when that time is not taken.

If you would like to approach the topic of training with your team or manager, these reflections can help you formulate clearly in your mind why training is needed.

If you have the capacity to offer training to staff, these questions can help reflect on what good training looks like.

  • Do you have access to the training you want to?
  • Think of the training opportunities in the last year: did they add value to you?
  • What kind of training opportunities would you like to have access to?
  • Be okay with uncertainty – training does not always offer, immediate, tangible benefits but do influence practice in the long-term
  • Do staff have permission to take time to learn?
  • Are you encouraged to take time for training?

If you would like to access or find out more about relational training for Staff, you can contact Staf here - info@staf.scot

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