|
|
Welcome to the latest issue of the City Challenge Newsletter
If you know it works – why change it? In this latest edition of our newsletter we look at why clients come back to City Challenge time and again, and highlight the top three skills which employees want to learn.
Plus, how the flexibility of City Challenge is offering clients some great new fun training day ideas.
REPEAT BUSINESS IS THE BEST
It’s over three years now since a team from healthcare giant Roche Products Ltd, took part in Challenge Oxford – a day later described as “incredibly useful, fun and a great way to learn some valuable lessons about the group”.
At the time, the team took part in a full HR Challenge, which included providing written objectives beforehand and having trained facilitators accompany each group on the day and provide feedback afterwards.
More recently, the 11-strong national sales team from Roche Diagnostics, participated in a similar event, a two-day City of London Challenge.
The fact that City Challenge had a good track record with Roche helped give Martin Groves, Training Manager, Diabetes Care, the confidence he needed to say yes to the training, which involved improving communication within his sales team.
Team objectives for the event included focusing on planning (agreeing, actions, roles delegates roles and working to each individuals’ strengths), communication through listening and getting the consensus of colleagues, and on using their time effectively.
On a personal level, people talked about wanting to understand their colleagues better and find out what made them ‘tick’, to build bonds within the team and understand better how to communicate.
Facilitators marked the teams on issues such as effectiveness in implementing plans, decision making and handling pressure, as well as dealing with conflict and, by the end of the event, reported good levels of awareness and good contributions from everyone to the common goal.
Martin commentated “The event was extremely useful in helping bring the team together more cohesively and we’ve seen this reflected back into the working environment. It was both an enjoyable and fun event, as well as having practical applications too, and we believe everyone benefited.”
In addition, he said, knowing that City Challenge had previously worked successfully within the organisation, helped ensure it was already aware of the culture and style of the business.
City of Westminster Council and IT company Citrix are just two of the other organisations who have been so satisfied with City Challenge that they’ve chosen to work with us on additional training events.
back
COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION
According to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), the top three skills employees want to learn or refresh are: communication, IT and literacy; problem solving; and self-management.
In a survey of 2,000 adults, the LSC found that 51 per cent said they wanted to focus on training to improve their career prospects and job security.
At City Challenge, we specialise in training and development days which help employees tackle exactly those issues. Why not find out if your staff could benefit – and remember that the cost of recruiting and training new team members is always going to be much higher than holding on to the good ones you have already.
back
UP AND RUNNING FOR THE OLYMPICS
City Challenge is all about flexibility and, with the 2012 London Olympics on the not too distant horizon, we’ve been gearing up to make sure we’re fit for business.
Just one of our new ideas is an Olympic-themed Challenge and we’ve already held the first event with a client in Bath – complete with top teams named after our most successful Beijing sporting stars, featuring gold, silver and bronze medals instead of points for all the right answers.
With time bonuses for correctly answering new picture questions and the chance to swap solutions for a “treasure chest key”, it’s just another example of the way City Challenge has the scalability to adapt its offering to suit client needs.
“City Challenge is all about having fun, while learning some of the key fundamentals of better communication, understanding and listening skills at the same time,” said managing director Jane Read. “The achievements of our Olympians in Beijing really captured the imagination and our new Olympic-themed Challenge is designed to borrow a little of that spirit and enthusiasm and make our events just as successful.”
It follows on from a special Trading Challenge, developed last year for several clients, which allows teams to buy and sell answers at a dedicated trading session, with each team being given “cash” to barter their way to the best information.
If you’d like to find out how City Challenge can develop a bespoke training event just for you, please contact me for more information.
|
