Sue Cohen - Developing the BEST

Situation

The 3,500 staff firm with 30 offices around the UK used a dedicated, residential training centre, with the majority of the annual face-to-face training programmes being delivered at the training centre and the remainder around the offices. A key challenge was to ensure a significant majority of the workshops were delivered to full and nearly full groups, with high utilisation of training rooms and residential facilities.

Sue Cohen’s role

• Agreeing the annual Performance targets for:
  • Number of events
  • Overall attendance rates for face-to-face events
  • Utilisation of training rooms
  • Utilisation of accommodation
  • Satisfaction ratings for training events and facilities
• Managing the Training Managers to ensure the mix of scheduled programmes met the needs of the business in terms of:
  • Topic areas
  • Number of staff and partners requiring the different programmes
  • The timing of delivery
  • Resources within each training area for permanent trainers, seconded staff, associate trainers/Subject Matter Experts, external trainers

• Working with the managers responsible for the administration of training programmes and managing the centre facilities so they were able to maximise use of the training rooms and accommodation
• Agreeing and managing costs were there was a need to utilise either external accommodation for internally-delivered programmes or external venues
• Managing the communications within the firm including advertising the schedule of programmes, with course outlines and objectives, follow-up, liaison across permanent, seconded, associate and external trainers
• Collating, managing and analysing monthly Key Performance Indicators, KPIs

Sue’s contribution

• Managed the diverse team of Training Managers, their secondees, associates and external trainers
• Managed integration of training manager needs, Training administration resources, training centre resources and budgets
• Worked closely with Director of Training and Executive Head of HR and Training to build and maintain relationships across the business, bringing together differing training requirements within manageable training function resources
• Worked with Training Managers to prioritise training needs and requirements across the business and deliver effective and efficient programmes, within agreed budgets and KPIs
• Worked with training administration functions to manage bookings and cancellations, external venues, external suppliers and related resources
• Collated and organised all training documentation and information and led implementation of Training and Learning Management System
• Designed, developed and delivered management training programmes
• Worked closely with Senior Development Manager co-delivering Development Centres and coaching programmes

Key achievements / outputs

Improved utilisation of resources including:

• Use of 5 main training rooms increased from approximately 80% to 90%
• Occupancy of residential facilities increased from 75% to 85%
• Short notice cancellations by individuals fell by 5%
• Number of events cancelled by training function reduced to 2%
• Number of events running at 90%+ capacity increased by 10%
• With increased events / attendees, number of days training delivery per trainer maintained