ItsDevelopmental - content + technology + people

Media Guardian focusses on journalism training

Today's Media Guardian has gone big on journalism training. Interesting to see how colleges are responding to the challenges of skilling journalists in new technologies. These courses are increasingly being taught by experienced journalists, which can only be a good thing.

Herae are the articles:

Jobs for the well connected by Peter Wilby

Creative and media diplomas by Clive Jones

Focus on mid-career training by Ricjhard Holledge

Training for non-graduates by Ian Hollingshead

Engaging journalists in the digital world

My colleague Andrew Rogers has a great blog on engagement -  it really shows the challenges the media is facing right now in changing attitudes and skills and getting journalists to become digital journalists. There is so much to do here. He kindly mentions the workshop. Hoorah. And which I am to reapeat in June.

On another point, went to a great presentation organised by Andrew which looked at how to develop successful community web sites.

Key issue: getting buy-in from all stakeholders involved in developing the site. The guy running the session from Sift (forgotten his name, oops) said that facilitation was particularly powerful here to get people together to work out how they can achieve their goals.

Heathrow Terminal 5 mess down to poor training

Well, there's a high profile, high budget project badly executed due to poor training.

Managers as coaches

Interesting. Definitely the way to go for managers to get the best from their people. The only problem is that you need good managers in the first place.

The search for training and development blogs begins

I've been looking on Technorati for decent HR and development-type blogs and found that there don't seem to be that many. So, rather than starting with a list I am going to start with one and that is John Ingham's Strategic Human Capital blog.

Don't be put off by the name - HR, formerly known as personnel, has a fine history of navel gazing and coming up with new names to make itself sound more strategic and valuable as a business cost centre.

I jest. HR's problem has always been that it is difficult to prove its value. Cue the accounting for People taskforce which promised so much in terms of forcing FTSE 100 companies to divulge their people policies but delivered so little - ie its recommendations were not taken on board.

I digress. John's blog looks like an interesting read.

   

Career coach John Lees wants your interview horror stories

Author and career coach John Lees is currently blogging on bookseller.com. People are being invited to, and I quote:

"For your chance to win copies of John Lees’ career books, share your zaniest or most traumatic job seeking experiences below - the person with most interesting story overall wins a FREE, 1-to-1 coaching session with John Lees himself!"

Brook Street survey shows poor employee training experience

Just had this in from Brook Street. This is the press release verbatim.

Survey results reveal that 28% of employees had asked for training but found that it never happens

Brook Street, the UK’s leading recruitment company has recently surveyed visitors to its company website www.brookstreet.co.uk asking for feedback on employees experience of training and development in their current job. 

The survey of over 300 people, found that 28% had asked for training in their current job, but found that it never happens.  27% were not aware of any training opportunities at their place of work and 19% said that there was no training available at their place of work.

16% reported a good experience, saying that support is there when they request it and a further 10% said that they were actively encouraged to develop.   

Erika Bannerman, Sales and Marketing Director at Brook Street said: “The survey results reveal the importance of training and development for employees. One of the key findings showed that 28% of those who responded had asked for training but found that it never happens”.

Erika added: “Here at Brook Street we believe that each of our applicants who register with us deserves as full a range of opportunities as possible. We are committed to developing applicants by offering a PC based training experience that helps identify any areas where an applicant might wish to enhance their skills”.

Our PC-based training system is available to support all Brook Street applicants upon registration, allowing us to build a clear picture of the applicants experience and help the applicant identify any areas that may enhance their current skills.

Comment: No excuses for employees not to be aware of training opportunities. But for training requests to come to nothing . . . what are the managers thinking of? Be better to not offer training at all - and that is, let's face it, not an option.

Workshop feedback - the training manager's perspective

Had a follow-up with the training manager who helped me deliver my career development workshop. These are the points he raised:

• Work on techniques to deal with difficult delegates
• Timekeeping - the training session will always take longer than the session plan says it will
• Write clear notes on the flipchart - mine were hard to read
• Make sure the exercises work - review them because they do not always work
• Start with a list of what delegates would like to get out of the session - and check back against them at the end of the session to ensure you have covered them
• Panel session went down really well. Chech feedback from delegates and develop the areas they really liked

Which train the trainer course to take?

I've got my first workshop under my belt and want to take a training course to a) learn new skills and tips on designing and conducting training programmes and b) prove to potential clients that I have taken some formal training myself and know what I am doing

What to do? I have been advised to take a two-day train the trainer course and I am looking at signinging up to a course by Adelphi Associates. It seems to cover all the basics but it still costs nearly £700.

That's a snip compared to the CIPD route, which by my maths will cost around £2,000. For that you get a certificate in training practice and CIPD membership. The membership would be good as many employers see it as a job requirement. But £2,000 - how is anybody supposed to afford that?

Leadership and crucibles

How about this for an intro to a press release? The release is promoting Crucibles of leadership - how to learn from experience to become a great leader by Robert Thomas.

"In medieval times, a crucible was the vessel in which alchemists attempted to turn base metals into gold.  In a leadership context, we think of a crucible as a transformative experience in which a person extracts his or her “gold” in a new or altered sense of identity and purpose."