Once again the popular press including London’s The Evening Standard is up in arms about the amount of money local councils have been spending on training programmes during these times of cuts and economic hardship. The article cites all sorts of external and internal training courses council workers have been sent on including ‘key fob training’ seminars, a ‘Using Social Media’ day, ‘Licensing Law for Sex Establishments’ training and as well as more mainstream communication skills training programmes and executive coaching sessions for a cabinet minister.

© istockphoto.com/Pali Rao

Of course, we, as the general public, deserve to know that our taxes are being spent wisely and prudently particularly when many of us are seeing local services reduced. It is natural that hackles start to rise when we hear about government or council workers spending valuable time sitting in tick box training courses that are not aligned to the real needs and context of the individual employees. Many local authorities offer a per employee annual training allowance and while this may be a modest amount of money, employees should not be encouraged to think that it is there to be spent regardless as this can be an easy route to wasting money. Best practice suggests that organisations that prioritise developing their people should set aside the equivalent of 1 -3% of their salary bill as the annual training budget – but not that this budget should necessarily be presented as a per head allowance. Furthermore, training, or more importantly learning, does not necessarily need a monetary value to be effective. For example, internal mentoring or coaching programmes can often be as valuable if not more than bringing in an external expert.

However, it seems simplistic to deny government and council workers access to learning and development opportunities available from external agencies. Roles and responsibilities are becoming increasingly complex with civil servants communicating with and on behalf of the departments and localities they represent. They need to be well-informed about the issues they face but equally need to be highly skilled to be able to communicate with impact to a wide range of stakeholders. So, while it is easy to joke about a council worker attending a training programme at the Institute of Licensing to understand the correct use of the law relating to sex establishments, is it not important that someone who is potentially responsible for monitoring or even closing down these businesses should have a full understanding of the legal context? Equally, a senior civil servant or government minister who has been successful due to his or her technical knowledge or subject matter may need targeted coaching support to manage the complex communication challenges they confront on a daily basis.

The media is right to question how the national and local government spend taxpayers’ money. But perhaps the questioning needs to be a little bit more intelligent and rather than throwing their hands up in horror because council workers are seemingly being trained on how to use a Blackberry or create a Facebook page they should look a little bit deeper into the training policy within that particular department or authority to ensure that any training budgets are spent effectively. Good questions to start with might include:

• How are external training companies assessed and selected?

• Are training fees negotiated and are there discounts in place?

• How are training objectives set out and mapped against business objectives – for individuals, teams and the organisation as a whole?

• Is there a focus during the course on workplace application?

• How is the impact of the training measured after the course has taken place?

• How accountable are individual employees for taking ownership of their own learning and development?

If the answers to these questions are unsatisfactory then is more cause for concern that if some of the training titles on offer appear suspicious.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011