5 Reasons For Using In-House Training.

In areas such as bid, proposal and tender writing, in-house training can deliver a tremendous return on investment.  Here’s a calculator to work out how much you could gain.

In-house training is where a trainer works with you to develop a bespoke course and then delivers it to a group comprising only your own staff.  The alternative is what is known as a ‘public’ course where a training programme is developed and marketed, then individual places on the course are booked by a number of different organisations.

In-house training has a huge number of advantages over public courses although there are some instances where public courses have merit too.   When you want a general overview of a topic or a single person needs specialist training then a public course can be a cheap way of achieving the aim. If, however, you are looking for something of greater impact or wider coverage then in-house training is more cost effective and gives better results.

Here are our top five reasons why in-house training is the recommended way to upskill your staff:

  • The course contents will be tailored to cover exactly what you need. This means your staff will not waste time listening to material they will not use.   It is widely accepted that on average, only one third of the material on a public training courses will be directly relevant to the participants.  A good in-house course will contain 100% relevant content.
  • The worked examples and illustrations will be familiar to the staff. During the preparation of an in-house training course, the workshop examples will be created using your own documents, customers and company details.  When staff are tackling them during the training, they will not have to interpret hypothetical situations or try to relate examples from other industry sectors to their own.
  • Your staff will have a high uptake of knowledge from the course. When all the material is relevant, staff will not ‘switch-off’ and are unlikely to suffer from concentration lapses.  If an implementation difficulty is identified, it can be talked though at the time and with other staff members as soon as it is raised, rather than being postponed and potentially becoming an insurmountable hurdle.
  • The attendees can openly discuss implementation of the training. On an in-house course, there are no concerns about confidentiality so trainees can air any concerns they may have about embedded the training alongside existing processes and procedures.   Even with commercially sensitive topics such as bidding for work, it is possible to have open discussions about areas of weakness or pricing.
  • The whole team will be trained to the same level, at the same time. Instead of having one or two people trying to convey information to a group, in-house training means that a professional trainer (skilled at conveying knowledge and checking for understanding) brings everyone to a consistent level on the same day.  This assists behavioural change since there is widespread buy-in to new working methods and concerns are dealt with as soon as they arise.

There are many other reasons clients book in-house training including the ability to work with the trainer in advance of the course and brief him/her about the staff attending.  A good trainer will be able to adapt the style and format of the training to suit the entire group.  She/he can also have strategies in place to deal with potentially difficult attendees or to fast-track where knowledge has been transferred more quickly than expected.

It is also cheaper and more time efficient per head to train in-house rather than send numerous people to a city-centre location.  Bringing a trainer into the company for a group session means that the per-head training cost is low and travel and subsistence costs for staff are eliminated.

At Rothera Group, we deliver some public courses and taster sessions to allow new customers to ‘try before they buy’ but the majority of our time is spent developing and delivering in-house training courses.  To find out about the customers who have benefited and testimonials about the value they have gained, read some case studies on our website.

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