Not kitted out

When Sarah Renshaw was hired by Arena Housing Association to be one of its 26 new customer service managers in November 2004, she wasn’t allowed to do her job. First, she had to go through a two-week induction covering areas such as dealing with antisocial behaviour, lettings procedures, and health and safety.

But far from being frustrated, Renshaw was impressed. “If I hadn’t had the right training, there are many things that could have gone very wrong,” she says. “I’ve not come across any training scheme so rigorous. I meet people who work as housing officers for other associations and they are amazed by the amount of training we get.”

Good training is particularly important in the housing sector: with employers reporting difficulties filling all their positions and retaining staff, many are increasingly happy to take people on based on their transferable skills, rather than specific housing experience.

But housing staff have always had to deal with potentially stressful situations, from confronting tenants in rent arrears to housing the homeless, drug users and the vulnerable – and the situations they have to deal with have become even riskier since the Antisocial Behaviour Act of 2003 made it possible for them to secure antisocial behaviour orders. Training provider Maybo, for example, found last month that one in 10 council staff have been assaulted in the past year (HT 15 April, page 13).

Training should also matter to employers – failing to provide staff with it can result in costly legal cases. In one high-profile case last year, Birmingham council housing employee Beverley Lancaster was awarded £67,000 for stress suffered at work. She had been forced to change from a clerical job to a customer-facing role. The court concluded her employer had not equipped her for the change with proper training.

Yet too many employers in the housing sector still fail to provide proper training.

In the course of Housing Today’s investigations into training, we were told several horror stories by people who felt they’d not received enough training for dealing with situations including antisocial behaviour, balancing accounts and confronting angry tenants. But very few were prepared to risk their jobs by talking to us, even anonymously.

Even those employees fortunate enough to get training may find it difficult to tell whether they’ve been taught what they need to know. And all too often employers provide the same programmes year after year, without stopping to consider whether they are appropriate for individual staff members. So if you are unsure whether your company’s training programme is up to scratch, here are six questions to help you decide.

<b>1)</b> Does your employer try to understand your training needs?

It is acceptable for inductions to contain generic content, but employers should be tailoring training programmes to meet individual staff needs as well. Often employers feel they have done their duty by herding staff into a room once a month to talk at them for an hour on a generic subject such as “customer service”.

But training experts say any programme worth its salt begins with a needs analysis. This is a lengthy process that involves the staff member, their managers and a trainer working to identify gaps in the individual’s skills and knowledge.

It would usually involve measuring the staff member’s performance against objectives over a period of time, one-to-one meetings to agree an action plan, and agreement with the training provider about the desired outcomes of a course.

So, while one employee might require assertiveness training, another might need to learn about the role of an audit committee, and a third might benefit from a course on data protection legislation.

The point is that everyone has different training needs.

<b>2)</B> Does your employer get the right people to deliver your training?

Training can be done in-house or by outside specialists. Whichever you are offered, make sure you benefit fully from the advantages.

There are many advantages to receiving training from a member of staff. They will have a much better understanding of the intricacies of the company and the job than an external training provider. If you receive training from your manager you probably know they have done your job and so know what they are talking about.

You will be receptive to what they say and they will also be able to tailor the course to the requirements of your company and job. They will also be readily available to answer any queries that arise once the course has finished.

But many organisations prefer to bring in external trainers. Peter Waine, a trainer at Maybo, has delivered courses on personal safety and conflict management to organisations such as the Guinness Trust and Sovereign Housing. “It can be useful to get an external perspective, to take a problem out of its context and just look at it objectively,” he says. “Also, bringing in professional trainers sends a signal to staff that the company is taking training seriously. Furthermore, hiring specialists tends to prove better value for money than reinventing the wheel in-house. It would take a human resources department years to accumulate the materials and experience we have here.”

<b>3)</b> Does your employer offer a mix of on-the-job and classroom training?

Employers should be tailoring training programmes to meet individual staff needs

Traditionally, training was something that took place in a classroom, with a trainer delivering information to a roomful of people who were probably thinking about what to eat for dinner or where the trainer got their hair cut. Modern training recognises the obvious limitations of this approach and uses a range of techniques to engage people. For instance, training can now be conducted through online tutorials, which allow people to learn at a pace and time that suits them.

On-the-job training can be effective too, as Andrea Dell, a project officer at Bristol council, discovered. “I’ve been working on option appraisals with tenants, and most of the training I’ve received has been on the job,” she says. “I’ve worked very closely with my manager, learning from her how to do things. It’s worked very well and I think it’s the best way to learn a job like this – it’s not something you can sit down in a classroom and do. To a large extent you have to be thrown in the deep end and get on with it.”

<b>4)</b> Does your boss really want you to train?

Many well intentioned training initiatives fail because they have support from human resources but not from line managers.

Hard-pressed managers may see it as a distraction from the proper business of providing housing services and as a result do all they can to ensure it fails. If your manager doesn’t want you to do more training, they will usually manage to stop you. A good employer will communicate the point of the training to your manager well in advance and explain clearly what benefits it will bring.

Carol Aaron, employee development officer at Nottingham City Homes, says it can also be difficult to persuade staff themselves to take up training.

Nottingham City was set up in April 2005 with 1400 staff to arm’s-length manage about 32,000 homes. “Four hundred and fifty of our staff are highly qualified and skilled craft operatives such as joiners, plumbers and electricians,” explains Aaron. “But they were reluctant to take up the training we were offering in areas such as customer service and equality and diversity. So, in conjunction with union representatives, we’ve set up a lifelong learning committee to encourage staff to take up training.”

This will focus on promoting the benefits of training and explaining what’s involved in different courses.

<b>5)</b> Does your employer put enough money into training?

While it is possible to run successful training programmes on very small budgets, in general doing it properly requires a significant investment. As it can be difficult to ascribe either short- or long-term benefits directly to training, the financial commitment required is often one of the main stumbling blocks for employers. But if your employer is efficient, it should be getting good deals on bulk training, to ensure as many people as possible benefit.

Competition between providers keeps prices down, and while there are many training companies that charge high prices for a top-quality service, there are also many home-based freelancers who charge very little and may still deliver an excellent service.

As a guide, the Chartered Institute of Housing offers courses on a range of topics and charges about £200 a day per delegate.

It will also provide training at a client’s premises and charges £1000 a day for this, regardless of how many people attend.

The National Housing Federation claims that its courses can be run in-house for as little as £49 per day per delegate.

<b>6)</b> Does your employer help you to apply the training in your day-to-day work?

While the content and quality of the training itself are of paramount importance, many organisations forget to ensure that what has been learned is actually applied once the course has finished. As Kathy Hanson, head of training and conferences at the CIH,

puts it: “Many delegates turn up to training sessions not really knowing why they’re there. They’re not aware that changes need to be made to the way they work and they don’t understand how the course is intended to fit in with their day-to-day work.”

Then, when they get back to work, their managers don’t reinforce the training.

“If we learn something and then don’t use it, we quickly lose it, so it’s vital that managers talk to their staff to find out what they learned and then ask them regularly how they are applying it. Doing this makes training much more effective and also helps in planning future training sessions.”