TRAINING & CPD


TRAINING: WHAT TO PRIORITISE


The wealth of skills needed in FM - and its constantly changing nature as a sector - means there are many areas an FM manager can allocate their budget to when it comes to coaching their team, suggests Colin Dulson of Berrison.


Where is the FM training budget - with its inevitable limitations - best spent? There are two main areas that must be looked at in detail: the practical and the people skills.


Your team ‘on the ground’ needs to be able to use the tools you give them and deliver the service you are paid to provide. They need to have the practical training to be able to do the job that is expected of them, to the right standard, in a reasonable timeframe. They need to have the most up to date practical skills to deliver the job expected of them.


There will always be a need to spend a proportion of the training budget on the technical and compliance training. It’s a legal obligation and you simply cannot give a team some new technology or resource and not train them how to use it. But what to do with the rest of the budget?


As well as the practical skills, there are the people skills - and this is where it gets interesting.


While you can and should provide the skills to complete the task and the skills to engage effectively with people, the only way that the service team will go the extra mile is to be working in an environment that makes them proud and willing to be great with people. No amount of remuneration or demanding will achieve this, only how they feel will matter.


30 | TOMORROW’S FM


Your managers need to be able to communicate well with their clients and suppliers, to ensure their teams remain motivated and engaged with what can, for some, be quite repetitive work, while the customers need to be reassured and confident of success when projects can and do sometimes slip behind schedule. Investment of the training budget in that environment is key.


So, here’s a suggestion: take the remaining budget and double its value. It sounds impossible but it can be done.


You achieve this at zero cost by redefining how the contract’s senior management team participate in, and drive development of, individuals and the team. The best training resource is the leadership of the contract and it depends on how they see their role and its responsibilities. Trainer or director? Provider or receiver?


Investing in the leadership and capability of the senior team, and the supervisors supporting the various teams within the contract, is a critical investment that affects both skill levels and the working environment. Team leaders are trainers, but they are still human and need their own support and encouragement - and good leadership and training skills are not inherited, they are developed.


twitter.com/TomorrowsFM


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64