Q: From your experience working in Malta, how much do employers invest in training?

It is the organisations that have a culture of continuous training and development that make their training pay off and get their return on investment

A: Over the years, I have noticed that there is more investment in training, but I am bound to say that it is not enough. To make sense of any figures, you need to separate the budget spent on compulsory training like health and safety, technical and operational training, from soft skills training like management, sales, customer care, communication and team building.

The soft skills area is where more investment is needed. That said, the situation is getting better, which is a positive sign. Recent training grants helped encourage companies to invest more, although this accounted for a very small amount of our business and the grants sadly encouraged some companies to select the lowest cost provider, which resulted in poor quality training.

We have a number of examples where a client asked us to quote on an ongoing project. What would have happened is that they would have given the project to a low cost provider and got a grant, and then half way into the project they stopped using the low cost provider because it was not effective and the delegates were complaining about the poor quality of the training. The client then came back to us and we picked up the pieces and delivered a programme that was effective. This restores my faith that people do pay for quality training and this is why Mdina always finds ways of utilising its clients’ budget in the most effective manner.

Q: How are the training needs of an organisation assessed?

A: Our clients use our development tool called DART. This is a tool we use with all our clients which helps them and us identify training and development needs. Managers use DART to score their staff on a range of skills, knowledge and attributes that are needed for the relevant jobs. These are designed for each client. Then we ask the prospective trainees to complete the tool against the same criteria.

Other organisations use their own performance review tools. Sadly, other organisations do not identify the needs in enough detail for the training to be effective. They just think that, for instance, if they have received some customer complaints, then they need customer service training.

Sometimes we get a request for training and when we carry out our research stage – which is designed to identify training needs – we find that the original request is in fact not the training priority but something else like management or supervisory training. Before any training and development programme is delivered, we insist on meeting all or a sample of the people we are going to train. This is our way of getting to know the people we are going to train so we do not waste time in the group session – moreover, it helps us verify that the training needs are in line with our perceptions and findings.

We also meet with the line managers of the prospective trainees – we do this to understand if they are on board with the forthcoming training, what their general attitude towards the organisation and their team is, and to make sure they understand their role as managers before, during and after the training. This also enables us to have a good understanding of the culture within the organisation.

Q: How important is continuous learning?

A: It is the organisations that have a culture of continuous training and development that make their training pay off and get their return on investment.

A few years ago organisations use to think IT was a one-off cost – they thought that by investing in a new system, they would be covered for the following five years. Nowadays, organisations acknowledge that IT is a continuous investment. The same applies to training and development – you cannot send managers on a four-day training course and expect them to return as fully capable managers. Training needs to be continuous – it should be constantly fine-tuned and lead to coaching and mentoring.

Q: Workforces are increasingly becoming international. Should cultural awareness happen naturally or be included as part of a training programme?

A: I have run training programmes in 32 different countries across all the continents and it is incredible how different cultures demand different approaches to training and developing people. Some organisations train their sales people in how to sell in different cultures and we seem to be running more of these types of programmes lately.

My advice to organisations is to train their people in cultural awareness if these are interacting internationally. Even in the case of people who may never go to the markets but who communicate over the phone and by e-mail, different cultures demand different approaches and communication.

Even within the Mdina Group, we have a different approach between our Malta office and our offices in England, Germany and the United States. Even in the USA there are huge differences between actual states when it comes to delivery of training

Q: What is the concept of bite-sized learning and how does it work?

A: Bite-sized learning is based on a little-but-often approach. It has been proven many times that giving people small amounts of knowledge and skill and allowing them time to try and implement is far more effective than loading a lot of information and knowledge in one go.

Drip-feeding people instead of overloading them with information will result in a higher retention. For instance, in the case of a six-day basic management skills course, we have found that the most effective delivery is an initial two-day session followed by four one-day sessions, held one month apart – this means that the training is delivered over five months. With management skills, you need to give managers time to go back to their office and try out some of the new skills they have learnt. They can then bring back their experiences to the next session, during which we can review achievement and discuss areas where it has not worked for them. This approach if much more effective than delivering consecutive sessions.

Q: Is coaching a long-term approach to training?

A: Coaching and mentoring are becoming increasingly popular in Malta. This is good news because so much can be achieved by coaching individuals and teams on the job. Coaching plays a major role in the effectiveness of training.

Q: What role does retraining play in a career change?

A: People who are going through a career change need to develop skills that are needed for their new role. They might also need to improve their confidence, have the right attitude, and build their self-esteem.

I have worked on a project to help women who are returning to work – in many cases they were going into new careers and very often working with or for people who were younger than them. The easy part of the training and induction was learning new skills and knowledge needed for the new role – on the other hand, the most challenging part was getting their confidence to the right levels, building their self-esteem and ensuring their attitude would help them get all the help they need from their peer group.

Q: How do you adapt a training programme to a company’s business strategy?

A: From my experience, the steps are clear. First, from the strategy comes the business plan. Then from the business plan comes the ideal organisational structure to achieve the plan – this will also have clear accountability profiles (like a job description) which clearly states the accountability of this position and the skills, knowledge and attributes the job holder needs to have. From the structure comes the task of putting the right people into the designed structure. Once the people are in the structure, we identify their training and development needs through training needs analysis.

Q: Fun is an important element in your training programmes – what are the fun elements that you include?

A: We put a lot of emphasis on having fun during training. If people are happy and having fun, there is a greater chance that they will retain what has been covered during a training session than if they are not enjoying themselves. We use a variety of methods, like playing different games that emphasise a particular point that we are trying to make but in a fun way. We also have self-assessment exercises that most individuals love to do – again, we are trying to get them to understand themselves better.

We include a range of real-life stories about things that have happened to us – these stories are usually funny but they help us make a point. I always encourage my trainers to share stories, in particular stories where we got it wrong. This encourages the delegates to share their stories and to not be afraid to laugh at themselves. During sessions, we always have a couple of people who allow themselves to be used as examples for funny stories – these are a trainer’s dream as they set the dynamics of the group and create a lot of positive energy.

Steve Tarr is the managing director of the Mdina Group of Companies.

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