Fire Safety
Fire safety training should equip attendees with the skills and knowledge requied to manage their workplace safely. Fire saftey training is important for business owners, managers and employees. The regulatory reform order 2005 clearly states that employers and business owners ‘must ensure that your employees are provided with adequate saftey training’. If you are considering fire safety training in northern ireland, ensure that your supplier is a fully quallified fire consultant. The FCSNI (Fire Compliance and Safety Northern Ireland) organisation has offices in Belfast, Ballymena, Derry, Enniskillen and Newry.
Project Management
Project managment has been described as the art of ‘planning, organizing and managing resources to achieve a specific goal’. Good project mangement skills can mean the difference between success and failure for an organisation – and project management is definitley a skill that needs to be learned through training – you may be a born communicator and you may be a very organised person, but good project management methodologies and techniques are very difficult to take on board and practice without at least some level of training. There are software programs such as Microsft Project which can help you manage and control a program. These tools allow you to set out a plan for how you are going to achieve a specific seriec of steps, and then to measure the actual progress according to the plan and adpat accordingly. There are a number of project management training courses on offer in Northern Ireland, some of them dealing with the IT side (Microsoft Project) and some of them dealing with the more general methodology concepts of good project management.
Time Management
Do you ever find that you start the day with a list of 10 things that you want to get done, but by hometime you have only achieved 2 or 3 of the items on thei list? And you are left wondering what happened to all that time – where did it all go. Time management is about planning what you are going to do – allocating the time that is needed to do what you are planning to do and then MOST IMPORTANTLY, protecting that time allocation form being eaten up doing other things. There is a great book on time mangement called EAT THAT FROG and it describes in detail how to go about writing down the list of things you want to achieve, prioritising the list and then starting from the very first item to stay focussed on achiveing that and only that one item. Do not allow yourself to get distracted with some thing else and then have to come back to the task again – that is loosing time. Say for example you are on the internet right now searching for ‘Time management training northern ireland’ – well good time mangement would dictate that you do not stop this search until you have selected your trainign course and booked a place on it!
Supervisor
Workers who are good at what they do will often find themselves promoted to a supervisory level – but just because they are good at the core task (whether it be engineering, programming or customer service), this does not mean that they will naturally go on to be good supervisors. Whilst the core job will usually require specific technical skills, supervising others to do the job will involve a whole new set of skills such as people management, time managment and good communication. It is the superviosors responsibility to ensure that the team are doing their job and to report the progress back up to management, and to excel in the new role they will typically require at least some level of supervisor training. Supervisor training will help the employee to understand their position within the company, to set SMART goals and to understand how to communicate more effectively and deal with people.
Management
The importance of good management can never be underestimated – you are paying your workers every hour of their working day, and the return you get for that money is, by no insignificant amount, determined by the effectiveness of the manager that is overseaing and manageing the work that they do. Effective management training will inspire a manager to go on to get the best out of his team – and this is a win-win-win – for you, the manager and his team. Essential management skills revolve around good people skills – learning how to communicate with and deal with people, and learning how to get the most of them. This differs somewhat from leadership trianing which is more about being an inspirational leader, having the vision to drive the company forward, bringiing your managers with you. There are a wide range of management training programs available, and Invest Northern Ireland will often help out with funding for this trianing for its client companies.
Leadership
Leadership is about so much more than management. Leadership is not easy to define, although you know it when you see it and you can definitly notice it missing when it is not there! Leadership demands all the skills of management such as good communication, organisation, flexibility and the ability to think on your feet and adapt. But leadership also demands foresight, empathy, integrity and vision. Leaders are responsible for brining thier team forward – so it is absolutely critical that they know where they are going (otherwise how do they home to bring their team there!). Good leadership training, delivered to the right person, can completely transform an entire company. A motivated leader who has taken the time and effort to improve their leadership skills will typically go on to insipre her management team and the entire company to improve. The best leadership training that we are aware of in Northern Ireland is available from Excelus training.
Selling
Selling is absolutely central to the life of your business – after all, if you do not have sales you do not have a business. Effective sales techniques can make the difference between success and failure, and effective sales comes from effective sales training – so it is not hard to see why sales trianing is so important to the success of your business. The sales process can vary tremendously depending on your industry and business model – business-to-business selling usually involves chasing after sales, converting cold leads through to hot leads through to customers through a series of meetings, phonecalls emails and other communications. Online sales on the other hand will typically have no human interaction – with the customer finind the website, researching the offering and proceeding through to sales checkout directly online. So it is important to ensure that any sales training that you sign up to is appropriate to your line of business.
Finance
Accountants seem to have developed a language of thier own to describe what are actually perfectly straightforward concepts when they have been described in a straightforward way. Do you sometimes find yourself a bit out of your depth when your accountant starts talking about liquidity ratios, net present value or return on capital employed? If so, then you may well benefit from some basic finance training – sometimes described as ‘Finance for Non Financial Managers’. For aspiring employees, finance trianing can help give you a head start when going for that promotion. For business owners who are good at what they do but are not so strong on the numbers, some basic finance training can really help you get a picture of your companies financial help, and can help improve your chances of success when approaching the bank manager about a business loan.
Employee
Employee training is a vital requirement for maintaining a well skilled workforce that can drive your company forward. In an ideal world companies would hire people who already have the training and skills required to do thier job effectively but the reality is that employee training is nearly always required to bring your staff up to speed. On-the-job training is off course the most obvious training method, and employees should always be encouraged to take the time to learn the different elements of the job that they need to know in order to do thier job properly and efficiently. But sometimes a more formal approach is required to training your staff to the optimim level. recognising the importance of employee training, Invest Northern Ireland will often offer support to client companies wishing to carry out a comprehensive ’skills upgrade’ for thier employees.
Communication
Good communication skills is absolutely core to succeeding in business. To be a good manager you need to be able to communicate well with your employees. Good comunication with every stakeholder in the business is vital – whether they be a client, supplier, customer, employee or shareholder. Being an effective communicator takes real skill and these skills need to learned and developed on an ongoing basis. Good communicators are constantly trying to improve thier communication skills. There are a number of organisations in northern ireland who offer communication training – the most intensive being the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication at Loughry campus in Co Tyrone, Northern Ireland