Workforce Development in difficult times-training staff on a budget

Q "what is the cost of training?"A "what is the cost of not training people?"

Benefits of workforce development

NCVYS article: Investing in your workforce is more important than ever(October 2010)

Creative and low cost options for workforce development

Zoe Amar fromLASAbelieves that there are still lots of creative and cost-effective options out there to help your staff. Here are some which she says are worth considering:

• Continue to make the business case for training. Wright says: "When making the case for training, you need to be clear on what exactly you want to achieve from it by setting objectives. It's important to identify what you would expect staff to do differently as a result of the training and to demonstrate how the organisation will benefit as a result. It is good practice to show that you have researched the training options available and to explain how the one you are proposing is the best option for those who are being trained and the organisation as a whole."

• Consider bringing training providers into your organisation to train groups of your staff. If a number of staff need training, hiring a supplier to deliver a course can be more cost-effective than sending staff alone or in pairs to be trained. These courses can either be "off the shelf" or tailored to your charity's needs and are a popular option among many of the charities we work with. For example, we recently trained a group of housing officers and income officers from a national housing association who needed a bespoke course to help them advise their residents about claiming welfare benefits.

• Mentoring. If your staff need continuing advice, guidance and feedback about a specific area, then they could benefit from being mentored. Charity Comms has an excellent mentoring scheme: it found me a brilliant mentor when I was new to the sector a few years ago. The Media Trust can also match staff with mentors.

• Online learning. There are plenty of online spaces in the sector where people can share knowledge and learn from each other. KnowHow NonProfit provides podcasts, e-learning and "how to" guides, while the Rightsnet site has discussion forums to enable peer-to-peer learning alongside daily news updates and other resources.

“At Lasa, we always advise the charities who we train to talk to their staff to find out how they like to learn, so they can determine if e-learning is a good option for them. "Blended learning" options including face-to-face, online training and peer learning can also be cost-effective and are a good way to support ongoing staff development. To avoid this being a second best option, it's good to conduct a training needs analysis for your staff to work out which learning methods would best support their needs. Skills Third Sector has a great toolkit (pdf) to help you do this.”

Advice from other organisations (taken mainly from a Q and A discussion on ‘How to meet your charity's training needs despite budget cuts’ on The Guardian’s Voluntary Sector Network on Tuesday 6 September. For the ‘best bits’, go to

Bring organisations together to commission training

Contact similar organisations to co-fund a trainer. A more formal example is Skills Share.

Skill Share helps connect hundreds of voluntary and community sectorgroups and organisationsworking with children and young people. They aim to share information, skills and expertise to support the workforce across East Sussex.

Make use of contacts; for example within the Charity Learning Consortium one of the members is starting a coaching group, made up of people working in different charities supporting one another. Access training and development for free from the networks your senior managers and trustees form, there are often people with the knowledge and skills you need who are willing to give time and expertise for free.

Recognise informal learning as continuing professional development (CPD); help employees make the most of all sorts of learning opportunities - ask people what they've learned from colleagues recently?

Be shameless about asking for discounts, and negotiating really hard! People know that times are tough - many freelance trainers have reduced their fees or are offering BOGOFs. So ask!

Something new can be learned most days from the range of twitter, hootsuite, stumbleupon, linkedin and other social media including trainingzone. All completely free.

What’s available?

E-learning

Training can be delivered in a much more cost effective way with both travel expenses and time away from the office reduced.

Staff/volunteers have access to training whenever and wherever they have internet access.

Staff/volunteers receive consistent training messages that they can refer back to as often as they like.

Organisations can give new staff/volunteers immediate training without having to wait for a classroom to become available.

Basic child protection- Safe Network

Free EduCare modules:

Family Wellbeing Model

  • Introduction to The Common Assessment Framework
  • Information Sharing
  • Integrated Working
  • Safeguarding Children
  • Working with Parents
  • Introduction and overview of the Family Wellbeing Model

Information, guidance and support for practitioners on the Family Wellbeing Model

The Children and Families Partnership has a website where practitioners can find lots of useful information, guidance and support to help them to use the model.

The website includes the following:

  • Information on the aims and objectives of the Family Wellbeing Model.
  • Descriptions of the tiers of need, and the full set of indicators of possible need to support professionals in their decision-makingabout what tier of support and intervention a family might need.
  • An interactive version of the decision tree for practitioners to click through, to help plan action. The full poster version of the decision tree is also available on the website.
  • Everything practitioners need to know about CAF, including links to up-to-date forms, eCAF and full guidance on how to complete the CAF.
  • Guidance to help identify a Lead Practitioner, and how to effectively work as a Team Around the Child.
  • The Family Services Directory, to help practitioners find services to help meet the additional needs of a child, young person, or family they’re working with.
  • Information on the Social Inclusion Panel (SIP) including the protocol and how to refer.
  • Guidance on how practitioners should work together to manage exit and step down from specialist support to targeted and universal services.
  • Guidance on information sharing.
  • Case studies showing practitioners assessing and meeting the needs of children/ young people and their families, using the principles set out in the Family Wellbeing Model. These case studies are a useful resource to help practitioners in their day to day work, and can also be discussed in team meetings as part of development work.

Go to:

Cost effective e-learning options

Knowhow Nonprofit. KnowHow's StudyZone is a user-led video training platform that provides quick, accessible online training on issues suggested by their community.

Happy are about to launch a site (itself free to use) called Learnfizz, to find and organise the best free online resources to make it easier for people to learn informally on the web.

has lots of free resources, and the site has a very active Q&A forum - a very supportive community website, with more than 40,000 members.

also has lots of free resources on the effective use of learning technologies.

Marketing Teacher free website for marketing and comms information

work and life learning. Free career help, business training, organisational development - inspirational, innovative ideas, materials, exercises, tools, templates.

practical, straightforward skills to develop, they believe that anyone can learn and use these simple processes and techniques to make the very most of their careers.

LBTH short courses (some charges may apply but only organisations over 20 staff)

Children and Families Partnership multi-agency training:

  • Safeguarding
  • Safer recruitment
  • CAMHS Foundation
  • Children’s Rights
  • Welfare Benefits

Contact Kobita Begum, Central Services Workforce Development, 6th Floor Anchorage House, 2 Clove Crescent, London E14 2BE Email:

Short courses-not too expensive and sometimes bursaries

  • THCVS
  • Volunteer Centre Tower Hamlets
  • 15billion
  • LVSC
  • Happy
  • Adult education,
  • Tower Hamlets: Idea store, Tower Hamlets College
  • Direct Gov: Direct.gov.ukprovides useful information on their web pages for adult learners -outlininghelp with learning costs: an introduction.
  • Open University, over 600 free courses available on their Open Learn platform

Funded Training

Keep an eye out for providers funding apprenticeships in IT, customer service, administration as well as more specific qualifications (like construction etc).

Watch out for deals...

  • Directory of Social Change (DSC)recent early bird bookings
  • Happy (LVSC) last minute reductions
  • Opt in and out short, good value sessions, eg Charity Fair

Related resources

  • Eg DSC courses pages have ‘You may also like’ suggesting downloads, books etc (sometimes free)
  • DSC: access some free downloadable 2 pagers on different topics

Funding

  • NCVYS/NAVCA Funding guide (new edition due Autumn 2011)

NCVYS and NAVCA have created theFunding Guidefor Workforce Development(PDF versionJanuary 2012). Please note that the majority of the grant scheme information will be now out of date, but other information may still be of interest e.g. Charitable Trusts.

  • NCVYS mainfunding web page

Information about funding schemes aimed at the voluntary and community youth sector and further funding information sources.

  • NCVOhas created a useful resourceFunding and Costing Workforce and Governance Development which provides a toolkit consisting of templates and budget processes.
  • Direct Gov-financial help
  • Student finance
  • John Cass grants
  • Educational Grants search
  • Bursaries

Always ask about bursaries, some courses advertise them

Middle/senior management

  • Blogs/Membership of orgs are good sources ofdiscussion, information, advice

eg NCVO, NCB, NCVYS, Children England, NPC, London Youth, Collaborative Learning Network etc

Guardian’s Voluntary Sector Network useful

  • Mentoring can often be given free, for example
  • The Worshipful Company of Management Consultantsprovides mentoring and consulting services to Chairs and Chief Executives of smaller charities.
  • Media Trust has a bank of communications professionals who are actively looking for opportunities to volunteer to help with marketing, digital, PR and other communications questions. If you're looking for some help, have a look at the get support pages
  • Small Charities Coalition and Charity Trustee Network offer various free or cost effective services e.g. mentoring and skills sharing as well as a variety of learning events

Workforce qualifications

  • Early Years-new leaders
  • Work with parents

Other resources

Catalystis a consortium of four organisations working with the Department for Education (DfE) as the strategic partner for young people. As part of Catalyst, NCVYS is to work with a small number of voluntary sector-led training partnerships working across a number of local authority areas, to increase their ability to bid/tender for skills funding from a range of sources and develop a more sustainable business model.

  • The Foundation for Social Improvement focuses on supporting small charities through knowledge and skills development

The future?

  • 'Gamification' appears to be a new buzzword with enormous application for organisational learning
  • Training through social media is also of interest.