The role of area managers in providing support for training

In the popular imagination, managers are often seen as the figures who hand out rewards and reprimands. While we know that – in reality – their role is not (or should not be) solely this, it is also true that these professionals can have direct control over the path to creating a new habit within an organization or achieving a certain level of performance.

Therefore, an area manager's attitude towards a training course or a specific learning path has a fundamental impact on how the skills learned will be transferred to daily work.

Before the actual training delivery takes place, it is essential that managers strive to:

1. Seek out and recommend specific training courses that address the major gaps in their team members' skills or train them in anticipation of new needs, focusing particularly on courses that reflect in their content the situations and scenarios that collaborators will encounter in their daily work environment.
2. Request authorization for those among their team members who need it to take advantage of specific courses designed to address the current and future challenges of the organization.
3. Develop a code of conduct that clearly indicates to learners how to behave to get the most out of the training intervention. The focus should be on attitudes such as punctuality, collaboration with teachers and colleagues, autonomous preparation before the course delivery, etc.

At the end of the training path, it would be beneficial for a manager to strive to support its overall effectiveness by acting in this way:

1. Talking with collaborators about what they have learned, the connections they find in daily work activities, and any opportunities they are able to seize for the future that may arise precisely because of what they have learned.
2. Establishing an immediate connection with daily work activities as soon as the training is finished, in order to immediately put what has been learned into practice to make the skills solid over time.
3. Conducting follow-up actions on what has been learned and how it has been applied practically in everyday work.
4. Providing management with realistic feedback regarding the achievement of the objectives that the training course had set, based on how workers have been able to apply what they have learned in their daily work.

In addition to these absolutely fundamental activities for a manager who wants to properly support a training path in their area of competence, there are other ways to build a close link between training activities and the impact they will have on the organization. Let's look at them together:

1. Ensure that those who have participated in the training activities can provide a quick summary of the main concepts learned, to the benefit of staff who have not benefited from the course.
2. Prepare a set of reference resources available to the team that can be used by anyone who wants to self-train or support their training path.
3. Prepare a questionnaire that provides feedback on the training path, allowing for the identification of any gaps in the course, illustrating the main contents to those who have not participated so that they can understand if others might be interested in attending, and also allowing the latter to begin preparing autonomously in anticipation of future lessons.
4. Provide for follow-up actions with internal or external experts to discuss what has been learned.
5. Compile a list of online resources that can be read to further explore the topics covered during the course.
6. Choose from the trained people specific figures who can support colleagues in putting the skills learned into practice during daily activities.
7. Incorporate the attitude adopted during and after the training intervention into the annual performance review of collaborators.