External training suppliers
Featured in the People Development Methods training manual
By Beverley Williams
Category: People Management and Motivation
Credit price: 3 download credits (Single user)
Choosing the right external training supplier can be difficult when every brochure appears to offer answers to all your problems. Impressive descriptions of the benefits of a particular course may or may not accurately reflect its value. You need to ask questions to find out more about its content and, most importantly, whether it is appropriate for the learning needs you are trying to meet. By ensuring that you know what you want from a training course and by speaking to the suppliers, other customers, and previous learners, you can put yourself in the best position to objectively assess the potential value of a course. This training activity helps participants develop a checklist of questions to ask before they decide which external training suppliers to use.
Begin the training activity by explaining that choosing the right external training supplier can be difficult when every brochure seems to offer answers to all your problems. Ask the participants to give you some reasons why they shouldn’t make a booking from a brochure without finding out more about the company. You put responses on the flipchart and then show an OHT to emphasise the key issues. The participants work in groups to discuss given topic areas or possible problems and devise a checklist of questions for (a) themselves, (b) the potential suppliers, (c) other customers, and (d) previous learners. You coach during the exercise using a supplied generic checklist plus a number of supplied ‘prompt’ questions to help you. Each group presents their checklist sections for one or two of the categories to the rest of the group. Other participants can suggest additional questions at this point. You close the training activity by taking key learning points from the participants before distributing a key learning points handout and commenting on the contents where appropriate.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to help participants to develop a checklist of questions to ask: themselves; the suppliers; other customers; and former participants when choosing external training suppliers, enabling them to make informed decisions.
- Themes:
- Identifying non-training problems,
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 10 |
| Typical Duration: | 01:15:00 |
| No of Pages: | 13 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers with participants who are responsible for developing others, normally line managers. Ideally participants will have already covered, ‘Investigating development methods’, prior to taking part in this training activity.
Download the training activity, External training suppliers as featured in the Fenman training manual; People Development Methods