The best way to optimise your company’s efficiency and get the most out of your workforce is to introduce training that will engender an effective management structure. The benefits of successful management training include better standards of communication and higher levels of morale, with the knock on effect of improving staff confidence and motivation, increasing productivity and achieving higher staff retention and team performance rates. As with all forms of education, however, this will not be achieved to the standard you desire unless you have the right teacher with the appropriate educational tools. This article helps you select a management training company to suit your needs by covering specific areas of the work the company needs to be concentrating on.

An obvious, but critical, initial consideration is which of your employees you wish to train up and to what ends. For example, you might consider it necessary for your entire workforce to undergo some form of management training in order to instil a different ethos from top to bottom. Or you only require employees of management class and above to take the training, so that they can use their new skills to give better direction to junior employees. Another option might be to have only new employees undertake the training so that you have confidence that they will be able to perform their jobs. The question here should be whether this training will be a standard requirement for all new employees, or whether the need for it should be determined on a case by case basis. In order to make this decision easier, it might be useful to imagine yourself back in school and consider the wisdom of having year one take a year three course, firstly because they are unlikely to have the necessary resources to grasp the course’s basics, and secondly because it will have no practical application to their everyday lives. Bear in mind also, if you decide to make the training a mandatory requirement for all new employees, that are more likely to be younger, and thus will have different requirements and ways of learning than older employees.

Now that you have settled on who it is you would like to undergo the management training course, the next question is what sorts of management skills you want them trained in. There are two ways of looking at this. Perhaps the most obvious one is to consider the principle areas of your business where management levels are not up to the standards you want them to be. Consider the reasons for this. Is it a matter of communication skills and the way the information is being presented? Or is it the information itself? Are the directives too specific or too opaque or are the objectives not defined clearly enough, so that their implementation isn’t being carried out properly? Are the directives reaching the right people? And once an employee has started acting upon the directions, is there enough support for them to be able to carry them out to a satisfactory standard? Alternatively, you could seek out information from the management training companies themselves and review which training services would benefit your business in particular.

Now that you have defined who you want to train and what skills you want them trained in, the next stage is to investigate how the management training company undertakes the training. These are questions you should be considering:

# How many different learning methods do they incorporate in the training?

# Is the learning done on a one to one basis, in small groups or in a lecture hall?

# Will the course be participatory, involving virtual role play exercises closely approximating the real life situations the trainee might encounter, or mostly done through solo study using books?

# How much experience of working in the industry do the trainers have? Is their experience of a practical or theoretical bent? Have the trainers had employment in the past that uses the sorts of management skills they are teaching, or have they worked as supervisors, managers or senior managers?

# Are the programmes tailored to different levels of management (junior, middle and senior) or do they simply touch on core management skills?

# Will there be workshops and retreats tailored to your company’s need in particular? How often will the reviews be undertaken to assess the trainees’ progress, and what form will these assessments take?

Once the details of the sorts of training the company offers have been established, and you have looked at several management training companies, the question becomes which one to pick. As with all selection processes, it is advisable to seek references from similar businesses about the quality of work the management training company did and the level of improvement in standards of management that has been achieved since. It is also a good idea to involve your employees in the selection process, because they will be the ones undergoing the training. And to determine whether there are any issues, such as role duplication or overload, problems with your vertical or horizontal communication channels or specific interpersonal frictions, that you feel the management training company would be especially good at resolving. Look for any hidden costs, like transportation or expenses that might be incurred if the trainers have to come to your place of work and the level of care given after the course has been completed. For instance, will there be a direct line through to the trainer whenever an employee needs advice or support? After all, learning is a life long pursuit and continues long after you leave the classroom.

If you are interested in speaking to UK based Management Training Course Providers visit: http://www.approvedindex.co.uk/indexes/ManagementTraining/free-quote.aspx

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