Don't have time for learning?

 
Rosie’s Tip of the month – Finding the Time for Learning

The most common sentence I hear is:
"We don’t have time for training"
It is a concerning trend that people in the industry do not have time to attend
workshops, in-house trainings or take time to do online training. Thus, it begs the question how do people access up-to- date information and keep on track? And whilst that may be true in these busy times – the real fact is a dedicated time set aside for training and keeping up to date is NOT a priority in YOUR organisation or to YOU.

People who succeed in finding the time have
1. Had it imposed on them
2. Or negotiated it into their employment arrangement.

Options 1 is not always the best learning as people become like hostages. My worst
day in the training room is been given a group who don’t want to be there who have
other consents, inspections etc to do and try to negotiate with me their early exit. Or worse they heckle and disrupt everyone’s learning. It screams that there is not a learning culture in the organisation, even though it may be mandatory for competency it is not valued.
But guess what your area learning never the less!

Often learning sneaks up on us - it is informal

• Reinforcing old habits
• Learning on the job on the fly
• Learning good tricks or bad
• Non-assessed
• Inconsistent although organic

A senior manager told me recently –
​
"I negotiated with my boss to have 2 hours on a Friday to dedicate to my professional studies – that may be reading time, online training, or a dedicated revision time. Otherwise it just doesn’t happen."

No one as a manager wants to play the school teacher chasing up their staff doing
their “training “homework. A different manager told me that she was sick of having to
chase up workbook completions so she could sign people off. “Adult men have turned into back into building apprentices who don’t want to do their homework and resent me chasing them up. It wastes all of our time.”

So, what to do? Tips

Step 1: As a seasoned learning and development professional myself I highly
recommend that time be set aside for it – diaries in the calendar and respected. No
matter what form of training you chose this needs to be scheduled in otherwise it
won’t happen.
Step 2: Role model by doing it yourself.
Step 3: Make it a routine. Use staff meeting, gatherings of any sort - informal or
otherwise – call it training – bring an online or paper copy log book and get everyone
to complete their own logs. Use quizzes and short bursts of show and tell learning
like photos of jobs to stimulate discussion. Rather than being a burden – make it fun
“like the first person to bring in a photo of a COMPLYING xx” Wins a free nice coffee
etc.

This and many more tips have been put together by Lisa Ann Clifford (who manages
our online school)., Lisa is a registered teacher herself and has put together some
tips for the learner as well as for managers Download these below.

Tips for online learning for managers

Tips for online learning for learners

And in Rosie speak” Just do it. No more excuses.”

Check out our fantastic online learning options below

Online school