I joined Loch Associates Group as Head of Loch Training and Wellbeing almost a year ago, and what a time it has been. Busy is an understatement. Varied doesn’t do it justice. Exciting is just about getting there.
Almost immediately, it became apparent that a lot of our clients wanted to provide training to their managers, understanding many of their team had taken on managerial roles without prior training, or that even those managers who had undergone training were now facing greater pressures than ever before. Hybrid working, the increasing prevalence of mental ill health issues in the workplace and ‘The Great Resignation’ are just a small selection of the ‘new’ challenges managers are having to contend with all of it, making manager training even more critical than before and have triggered our clients to get in touch with us.
In response, I’ve spent the last few months delivering a range of in-house manager training:
- Nip it in the Bud
- Menopause Training
- Data Protection Training
- Employment Law – The Basics
- Managing Staff Exits
- Performance Management Done Right
- Managing Remote workers effectively
- Remuneration and Benchmarking
This sort of training is vital. Not only does it ensure staff are treated fairly, in accordance with the law and Acas guidance, it also ensures managers have the toolkit they need to manage their teams properly and feel confident and comfortable doing so. We all know how horrible it feels when we’re tasked with handling a situation at work we feel is outside our skill-set and experience – it undermines our confidence, makes us nervous and can induce high levels of stress and anxiety. So delivering training to our managers on how to manage well, can have a significant and extremely positive knock-on effect for their own wellbeing.
On the topic of wellbeing, we’ve been busy there too. We’ve rolled out Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training in-house for our clients, training their staff to spot the signs of a person experiencing poor mental health and feel confident supporting their own and others’ mental health and wellbeing. Our next Mental Health First Aider Course is in September, over Zoom. So if you’re looking to train up your staff and bolster the wellbeing support on offer to your people, consider booking them onto one of our courses or get in touch about in-house delivery. And not forgetting that physical first aid is a key part of workplace wellbeing, we’ve also delivered first aid training and medical emergency response training (MERT) to a range of clients across the country.
Our Managing Menopause in the Workplace training and Nipping Difficult Situations in the Bud sessions have been popular too. Both subjects can make managers feel somewhat nervous and uncomfortable but need addressing sensitively and definitively. During the workshops we deliver, I encourage questions and promote discussion amongst the attendees, to make sure everyone gets their pressing questions answered and to encourage learning from lived experience. I always walk away feeling buoyed up and keen to revisit my training materials to further develop and extend them with everything I’ve learnt from the participants.
We’ve delivered all this alongside our monthly free training webinars. So far, we’ve covered topics including managing holiday pay, recent legal updates, neurodiversity, fertility and stress management at work.
We’re also really excited about our financial wellbeing programme, due to be rolled out from September 2023. We’ll be delivering a number of free webinars in connection with our key financial wellbeing partners, before running an interactive financial wellbeing workshop to inspire and inform business-owners and decision-makers in connection with this important but often seemingly incomprehensible area of wellbeing support.
So, if you’re thinking it’s about time you rolled out some training to your people, get in touch with Loch Training and Wellbeing to see if we can help with in-house training at www.lochassociates.co.uk/contact-us/ or see our upcoming events on our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/loch-associates-group-14376897713.
