Reed Specialist Recruitment
Who are Reed Specialist Recruitment?
Reed Specialist Recruitment is a provider of permanent, contract, temporary and outsourced recruitment solutions, IT and HR consulting, across more than 20 specialisms.
Founded in 1960 by Alec Reed, today Reed is the leading independent recruitment company in the UK and resources for more than 10,000 clients from 425 business units across 180 locations worldwide.
Reed have always invested in the learning of their staff (Co-Members) and have a dedicated team of learning professionals who support the business globally.
What was the brief?
We were approached to design and deliver an advanced Train the Trainer programme for the learning and development team. The team were already established and between them had a wealth of knowledge and experience, albeit one or two team members were relatively new.
All had previously attended a train the trainer programme so they weren’t looking for a standard off the shelf train the trainer course. Instead, this was about bringing an already successful team together and thinking about how they could improve further and add more value to the business.
“Having already had the team complete ‘Train the Trainer’ when they had started I was looking for something to take their facilitation skills to the next level. Having worked with Donovan Training Associates before, and personally experiencing that improvement as a result, I was confident that they would deliver something excellent for us”
Our solution:
The emphasis was on designing a programme as opposed to a one off delivery day, ensuring that everybody had the opportunity to measure the impact of their learning. For this reason, we delivered two one day workshops several weeks apart, asking delegates to apply the learning from the first day on projects that they were all working on.
In terms of content, we focused on the following subject areas:
- Conducting an effective Training Needs Analysis
- Designing a stretching learning intervention, with particular focus on a senior audience
- Setting and agreeing learning objectives
- Measuring the impact of a learning intervention beyond the evaluation sheet
- Producing scalable lesson plans
- Incorporating follow up learning
Advanced facilitation techniques and facilitating senior delegates – the ones who have been there and already have the t-shirt
In recognition of the fact that everybody in the team were at slightly different levels and were working on a variety of projects, we then arranged to sit in on a live delivery session for every member of the team.
This enabled us not only to review the design and delivery style of the team, but also to have an insight into the reaction of the delegates who were involved in the learning. Each observed session was followed by a detailed one to one feedback session.
“The training session provided by Anthony was not only full of his own knowledge and experience - it was insightful and encouraged us to consider and share our own knowledge and experiences! By far the most beneficial part for me was his observation of one of my training sessions and his feedback afterwards. It was exciting for me to have some outside perspective of my training delivery, and within that my strengths and development areas.
It was a brilliant follow up from the workshops that were delivered as it allowed me to look at what had happened during my session and consider what could happen going forward if I enhance my facilitation techniques and the benefit that could have on my delegates as well as REED as a business. I was inspired by the feedback, and feel the advice and subjective feedback he gave me has made me a better trainer.”
