How to respond when someone asks you for more training

However, there are times when individuals or teams may request training that they need or that they want as part of their career development. When training budgets and funding are an ever-present challenge for public sector organisations, how can you respond to these requests, especially if you’re not able to approve extra training spend?

Consider if the training requested is a business need or skills gap in your team or service

Employee feedback on the training and development they need in order to carry out their roles is an important source of information for managing skills development in your organisation.

You should have robust learning and development systems and processes in place that allow this feedback, or other mechanisms such as employee feedback surveys.

If the training requested is a skills gap, it should be investigated and managed as an organisational challenge. It may require a skills gap analysis to take place, or a business case developed, to ensure that the appropriate solution is implemented.

Consider if the request forms a part of career progression and talent pipeline

Justice sector organisations have faced significant retention and recruitment challenges over the last decade. There is a well-acknowledged need to retain employees and build talent pipelines to ensure that skills stay within the workforce and that onboarding and recruitment costs are manageable.

Training and development opportunities are a key retention strategy. 94% of employees say they would stay longer at an organisation that invests in their career development.

In light of this, your organisation should have policies and processes in place to consider the career progression of employees. If an individual is indicating a desire to progress, there are likely resources and training available that you can utilise in order to support them.

What you can you do if there is no budget or business need for training spend

Funding in the public sector is heavily tied to outcomes. There may be instances where formal training and skills development can’t be supported. However, all justice sector organisations should have a strong commitment to continuous professional development (CPD) , and there are many ways to achieve this, such as:

• Seek training materials from your learning and development department, or other governmental sources.
• Try to find external training materials that may be free.
• Look at conferences and events – many of these may be free to public sector employees, or if not will be at a lower cost than some full training courses.
• Provide networking or mentoring opportunities from across the sector or your organisation and foster peer-to-peer training and development.
• You can maximise the impact of any CPD by providing opportunities for individuals to feed back to your team or colleagues about lessons learned and ideas gathered.

Support from Skills for Justice

Our experts work with organisations across the UK to plan and implement workforce development programmes. We can help make sure your employees have the skills, training opportunities and career progression pathways to support you to retain and attract the workforce you need to deliver excellent public services.