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31 July 2009 - How we can help you The long summer evenings give an opportunity for some analysis of how the training environment currently stands and an opportunity to address more fully a question that clients regardless of their market continually ask us – how are you finding business levels? For our own part, it continues to be extremely busy; in fact busier than the media suggests we should be. Our work currently ranges from providing coaching to senior management within both the public and private sectors through supporting a major plc client with a key two year process training programme to designing and delivering a management development programme to supporting a specialist client equip its people to reposition within a different market. In addition, we continue to work with our strategic partners Mastermind www.mastermind.eu in Europe in providing training consultancy services on the continent. Whilst activity and income levels remain in line with last year, we have noticed that we are generally being engaged within much shorter time periods than in previous years, typically within 4 -6 weeks from enquiry / initial discussions to action. This contrasts significantly from previous years in which we would have programmes booked in for periods between three and six months in advance. Our view is that whilst economic uncertainty remains, both public and private sector clients remain wary of committing to projects anything beyond the current and next quarters on a rolling basis. However, this understandable caution is matched by the philosophy that “life goes on” and that training (inductions, new processes, coaching and management development) has to continue if the organisation is to function effectively – interestingly, the visceral reaction of slashing training budgets at the first sign of economic downturn, as happened in previous downturns does not appear to have occurred to anything like the same extent this time around. The net result from our perspective is that the timeframes within which we operate from design to execution tend to be shorter whilst our longer term order book is less full, instead filling up on a much shorter term basis. It is our thought therefore that one indicator of increased confidence will be a client’s willingness to commit to significant training over longer time horizons. Ironically, our private sector clients are more confident than our public sector clients at the present time, the latter concerned at the impact of public sector spending cuts long into the future. In the meantime, we continue to work side by side with all of our clients to ensure they are in as good a position as possible to emerge when conditions within their sector do improve. |
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