Getting Started
Working in partnership
Start your planning by talking to relevant interested parties, including employees, union representatives, the human resources team, learning providers and regional NIACE staff.
You may want to form partnerships with other organisations interested in learning. This can help with planning, optimise resources and shares the workload. Each organisation can make its own contribution but together you have a greater impact, generate more energy and have more fun.
Some partners who can help with learning activities or events include:
- Colleges, local authorities and other learning providers;
- Personnel and training staff in the workplace;
- Local libraries and museums;
- Trade unions, union learning representatives and other employee representatives such as works councils;
- Local or regional staff of the appropriate Sector Skills Council for your industry;
- Regional NIACE staff.
Hidden talents
Why not try a "skills audit" of your existing employees to find out what skills and interests they have outside of those needed to do the job? This will help you find out what interests your workforce outside of their working hours. Encouraging the workforce to share their skills and experience is an excellent way to kick start adult learning activities. Perhaps a first step to adult learning could be to invite a couple of members of the workforce to share non-work-related knowledge or a skill, such as:
- Languages
- Information and Communications Technology (ICT)
- Community activity/Volunteering
- Local politics
- Sporting activities
- Local history
- Genealogy
- Crafts
- Visual and performing arts
- Cooking and baking
Learning sessions could be organised for lunchtimes or breaks where employees can demonstrate their skills for example, introducing a session on how to trace your family tree, or leading a discussion about the history of the local area, or demonstrating how to create a website..
Organising learning activities
Together with colleagues you need to decide on the type of activities you are going to run. If your organisation recognises a trade union, their union learning representatives may be keen to get involved and take on some of the tasks. You could also discuss the logistics of running some events with your training department and draw on their experience. Consider the following questions:
- Who is the learning for?
- Who will run the activity?
- When will the activity be held?
- Will staff be given time off to attend?
- What costs will be incurred?
- What benefits might develop?
You might decide to run:
- Work related training
- Taster sessions
- Hobby sharing
- Book swapping
- Job swaps/shadowing
- Quizzes and competitions
- Budgeting and financial planning
- Sign language
- Healthy eating awareness
- .. or even salsa dancing!
You will need to publicise the activities, using a range of approaches to tell as many people as possible about them. For help with this visit our Publicity pages.
Evaluating your events
It is important to evaluate your activities and events to discover what new skills your employees have learnt as well as what they have enjoyed. It can also help to identify any further training needs. You could distribute feedback forms to get staff opinion on the events they attended and find out what worked and what didn't. Particularly look for instances where the training has made a tangible difference e.g. where it's led to further learning opportunities for an individual or has had a positive impact on the business. You might also want to consider follow-on activities like re-running a popular session or providing colleagues with the information they need to continue learning, for example where they can find local classes, teams or associations.
> Evaluation forms for event attendees will soon be available from the Downloads page
> To register to take part in the Adult Learners' Week campaign click here.