Tapping into the news

Structured skill development is helping the largest national newspaper company in the UK to deliver a greater return on its investment in training.

News International, publisher of The Times, The Sun, The Sunday Timesand the News of the World, operates in the most competitive national newspaper marketplace in the world and so has to remain at the leading edge of technical innovation in media publishing. The company has a growing on-line business, with all four newspaper titles publishing internet editions.

Gill Honey, News International’s information technology training manager, said: “Competing successfully in a technology driven business comes down to two simple factors: having the most modern technology available and having staff who are able to use it effectively. Tight newspaper production deadlines leave no room for learning on the job – if the paper isn’t finished on time, it will not be on the newspaper stands. Similarly, if the finished paper is not of a high quality, it will not attract either readers or advertising revenue.”

Ensuring that staff are efficient at using complex IT systems under intense pressure is therefore a key challenge at News International. The IT training department was formed some ten years ago to take on that challenge.

“In the early stages of the IT training department’s formation,staff were employed from various areas within the company, creating a team with a wealth of News International industry knowledge but lacking formal training skills. As the department and its training portfolio expanded, it became important to find a programme that could offer a means to build the team’s training skills through a solid train-the-trainer programme, with scope for continued professional trainer development.

“The Trainer Assessment Programme (TAP) was selected to fill this gap both on its merits, and also because of its status as one of the leading professionally recognized training qualifications. The programme has now been in continuous use within the department for more than six years, providing us with an excellent framework on which to benchmark trainers’ skills and standardize training methods.”

Gill Honey believes that trainers are no different from any other members of staff. “They work best if they have a solid understanding of what they are trying to achieve and have a usable and understandable framework to work from. The programme immediately gave our trainers the confidence to handle delegates with demanding needs, and the reassurance that they were doing things right,”she said.

“Creating effective courses is partly about how to structure a course well, and partly about how to ensure an effective transfer of skills through the design of materials and delivery of the course. The programme encouraged our trainers to take responsibility for this process and to understand how to approach it professionally, using a solid foundation.”

IT trainer Joanna Dyson agreed with this analysis. “The TAP model offers the trainer a good framework for designing and delivering training,”she said. “For me it ensures that I keep the training learner-focused. When I attend external training courses that are not delivered using this method, two key things appear to be missing: room for me (the learner) to think and challenge myself, and clear guidance as to what we are trying to achieve from the trainer in the form of steps to success.”

Gill Honey continued: “Before implementing TAP, we used an all-too-common model for assessing when we had completed the delivery of a course – the sound of the door closing as the last of the course delegates left. There was no feedback process to check whether we had delivered a course that had met the delegate and the business needs. The first, and most important,thing that the programme has brought is to give us something to measure against,to judge where we are delivering training successfully and where we can make improvements.

“The programme has made training more participative, interactive and rewarding for both trainer and learner. It has enhanced the IT training department’s reputation within News International, with the effect that a significantly larger number of departments across the company are now approaching us to address their training needs. This has raised the department’s profile to higher management and helped to deliver a greater return on the investment in trainers and training facilities.”

Meanwhile, more than 140 employees of top UK retailer Tesco have attended courses leading to TAP certification.

In the early summer of 2002 a team from Tesco Academy – which sets the standards for training design and delivery within the business and the brand and is recognized as a kite mark for great training throughout the group –carried out a comprehensive review of existing policy in relation to training skills development. A decision was taken to implement a new approach to trainer development and training skills certification. It was regarded as important that this new approach incorporate the latest thinking and reflect modern adult learning principles.

Nicola Steele, Tesco Academy director, said: “We wanted to work in partnership with a like-minded organization that had a track record in trainer development but was flexible and pragmatic enough to adapt to Tesco needs.”

Tesco Academy approached the Training Foundation for advice. A tailored trainer development and certification scheme was then devised within the TAP framework. The Training Foundation was retained to deliver a programme of courses – designed to meet the needs of those responsible for training design and for training delivery within the academy and across the business– within the Tesco Academy portfolio. The Training Foundation and Tesco Academy jointly provide certification.

Nicola Steele said: “Feedback from the training has been good from the outset. Our people feel confident that they can design and deliver effective training that meets business objectives, increases knowledge and develops skill. They also find that the learning design and delivery skills they learn are easy to put into practice.”

Over the last three years more than 140 Tesco training and line management personnel have attended training delivery and training design courses leading to TAP certification. These employees were drawn from locations ranging from Eastern Europe to the north of Scotland.

“The skills provided by the Training Foundation have helped us to create great training programmes that are directly linked to business needs,”said Nicola Steele. “The Tesco Academy brand now acts as a guarantee to our people that the training they will receive will be of a consistently high quality.

“We have significantly increased the number of people able to design and deliver training internally and reduced our external training costs, which means it is simpler for our staff, cheaper for Tesco and better for customers.”

Tesco, one of the top three international retailers in the world, has 2,318 stores and 326,000 employees.