The prospect of participating in a training day is not something that fills the average person with excitement. The main offender of course is First Aid an undeniably vital skill but joining a group of strangers in a bland room to drink lukewarm coffee and administer CPR to the unresponsive torso of Little Anne is unlikely to be anyone’s idea of a great time. We persevere with these events every three years because it is important to know how to react when your co-worker is choking but also, I suspect, because having an appointed first aider in an office is a legal requirement. The fact remains however that being actively involved in training and development can be a vital boost to yourself, your career and your business.
There are the kinds of training that are dull but necessary and as such they are the things we immediately think of when we hear that somebody is away on training. Your business, and indeed every other business, requires a great many more skills than the knowledge of how to bandage an arm and carry out a basic risk assessment and it is these other skills, copy writing, management skills, use of Photoshop, public speaking expertise that can deliver a tangible benefit to your business. Small businesses in particular can be guilty of shying away from training courses as an unjustifiable expense but building a training budget into your forecasts can reap real long term rewards.
Setting aside the time to train yourself in a new area can help uncover whole new talents and new avenues for your businesses to explore. Fortunately if there really is absolutely no money available for you to train then the internet has delivered another option – if you have the dedication required you can frequently teach yourself to master a new skill for free online. In particular make sure you investigate the Open University’s range of free courses. You can give a whole day over to this method of learning or you can assemble your knowledge in small easy to digest steps as the skills become necessary – there’s no better way to learn how to input complex formulae and finely balanced conditional formatting to your Excel spreadsheets than suddenly realising that you need to do before your deadline hits at 5.
You can use the government Event Finder service to track down exactly the kind of training and development that you require. Winchester businesses can also take advantage of high quality training courses from a variety of outlets across the city including the established programmes of the Hampshire Chamber of Commerce and Southern Entrepreneurs. In addition Winchester BID continue to run their programme of networking events here in the Business Centre. These events offer an introduction to a wide range of topics aimed to benefit your business. Finding the time to train and develop your skills can bring real benefits to your business and to your personal confidence – helping you to discover your true strengths.
