Hear expert business advice from Alexander Pepper, Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who explains the differences in levels of training and what you should be looking for to know you are getting quality training and value for your investment:
"So training is two or three different things I guess. First of all there's basic skills training, there's giving people the personal tools and equipment that they need to be able to use to do their jobs. Very straight forward, basic, tangible stuff. You wouldn't be able to do this if you hadn't been shown how to do it and that covers, as well as the obvious, it covers things like quality, and risk management and you know what are the things that you need to know because if you didn't know them you wouldn't be safe doing your job or you wouldn't do a high quality job. That's basic level training. Over and above that there's, well let's call it development. There's how do you take people and enable them to grow into higher roles, to do things that they didn't realise when they joined that they would be able to do. That's more difficult, it's more reflective, it means taking people out of the work environment and often it means getting them to be stretched in their thinking and again it should be very action based learning.
The most effective development activity like this is very action based so it's not sitting in a classroom hearing someone lecture at you. It's using a selection of sort of formal lecturing and actions and activities, group work in order to develop new skills that you can use in your job. And then the third layer is kind of the business school the more academic piece where the best business schools are able to bring a kind of a depth of knowledge, a depth of insight that you don't have time to develop during the day to day hurly burly and by taking people away and putting them in a different environment often with different people from different companies so you get a more elective mix of ideas knocking around.
You can move the kind of the thinking to a higher level and get people to have a different perspective on the work they're doing combined with some of the theoretical stuff that you get in an academic community. That can be very, when its done well its hugely exciting to be part of that and to come back into your work environment with a fresh set of ideas and to look for different ways to apply them. So three levels kind of basic skills, more on top but work environment skills training and then ultimately the kind of away from the work place link with academia, link with business schools, got to be done right, got to be sort of real and experiential but those are the three levels of training that I see.
See more business news television shows from Alexander Pepper, as he gives his top expert business advice at http://www.yourbusinesschannel.com
Find out more about the very latest show releases, as well as other yourBusinessChannel news by visiting our blog at http://www.yourbusinesschannel.com/blog.aspx
<< Back to article
