No role plays!

Five months into 2011 we’ve found predictions of widespread reductions in spending haven’t happened

However, what has happened is training managers are expecting more value from the same spend; perhaps shorter on-site injections rather than day-long excursions; practical skills to delivery, quick wins rather than long-term upskilling.

Business training today is about being creative with your training budget and delivering short, high impact and memorable training. For us at KL Consultancy, we hope this will encourage other training companies to drop the dreaded role play!

Role plays are dated, there are many other ways to consolidate learning. We can all probably recall courses in which everyone sat around a big table in a large room, everyone did the usual “My name is Jo, I am a sales manager...” opening after which you each talked about your role and why you were there.

Times have changed and effective training must be able to show immediate results. Research shows we have an average attention span of 20 minutes and a good course will be designed with that in mind. Roughly every 20 minutes you should either change topic, break into a discussion, play a game, work on a team challenge or maybe complete a self-analysis questionnaire. Try something different just so long as it isn’t stale.

We need to train staff more than ever, we need to up-skill them for the duties we want them to take-on now we are coming out of recession and we need training to motivate them – quickly. The higher our motivation is, the better we will perform. The better your staff perform, the better your business performs!

> Kim Loveland is at KL Consultancy on 01582 401134 or email [email protected], www.klconsultancy.co.uk