Good Questions (4) - What did you gain as a result of working with us?

I went out on some visits to employers last week. I was accompanying a Business Development Manager from a learning provider organisation.

Whilst we were at one employer organisation, he asked the question:

“What did gain from working with us?”

The answer he received was:

“We got some free training.”

I felt sorry for that manager, and wouldn’t have liked to have been in his shoes when he reported back to his senior team about his own organisation's readiness to go forward to TQS certification.

Yet, the exchange illustrates an important point.

You need to help the employer to be clear about what he or she is going to gain from working with you before you begin a programme. If you do that, the employer can be looking out for those benefits during the life of the training programme.

I was in a different employer organisation recently where the answer to the same question was:

“As a result of the SAFED training we have reduced our fuel consumption by 2%, so despite the fact that diesel prices are going up again, we are spending about the same on fuel as we were three months ago.”

How would you feel if your employer customers said this?

I know the account manager sitting next to me in that meeting was grinning from ear to ear for the rest of the day.

Remember then, that is you want your employers to see the benefits of working with you, you need to help them to know what they will get out of working with you before the training begins.

Employers won’t make statements like the one from the owner of the transport company above, unless you set them on the right track to begin with.