Do your staff struggle to stay awake during mandatory training? You’re not alone, many businesses face the challenge of keeping staff motivated during mandatory training, we can help. We create Mandatory training SO good, your teams will want to turn up and learn!

Compliance doesn’t have to mean dull and boring. We make teaching interactive and fun. As a result, your team fully engages and learns what they need to know. This is important as this type of training is designed to reduce organizational risks and comply with local or national policies and government guidelines.

Mandatory training can include but is not limited to:

• Adult Safeguarding in Practice: Substance Misuse
• Anaphylaxis
• Awareness of Mental Capacity Act/DOLS
• Basic Life Support – Various add-ons available
• Care Certificate Assessor
• COSHH
• Emergency First Aid at Work
• Fire Marshal with and without Extinguishers
• Fire Safety Awareness
• Fire Safety for Managers
• First Aid at Work – 3 Day & 2 Day Refresher
• First Aid Awareness
• Food Safety Awareness
• Food Safety
• Health and Safety
• Health, Safety and Risk Awareness
• Hoist Awareness
• IOSH
• Moving and Positioning of Objects and/or People
• Moving and Positioning Train the Trainer
• Safeguarding Adults at Risk
• Safeguarding – Child Protection Awareness
• Safeguarding for Managers

Employer obligations

As a healthcare employer, there are many frameworks under which employers should be delivering mandatory training. The NHS for example is required to meet the standards for better health, NHS Resolution risk management standards and the Care Quality Commission inspection criteria. Regardless of your framework, Knights Absorb can help with your mandatory training.

Mandatory Training with Knights Absorb

Training is not just about staying compliant; it’s about ensuring your people can safely and confidently do a great job and support those they serve.

The problem is, trying to get people engaged with (or even turn up for) mandatory training is a challenge when many courses are too broad and, dare we say it – too boring. That’s frustrating. Especially when some of the skills your people need training in could, ultimately, save lives. Worrying about what could go wrong if your teams aren’t getting the required learning is enough to keep you awake at night!

But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

We’ve helped organisations like yours increase training attendance from 60% to as high as 90% in just 3 months.

Let us help you. Learn more about our mandatory training courses and get in touch.

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According to the Office of National Statistics, productivity in the UK workplace remains below the long-term pre-2008 trend. Training is an effective way to boost your workers’ output. Not only does it upskill employees to perform better, it can also reduce staff turnover and improve engagement. Here we look at some of the major factors that can affect your company’s productivity, and suggest some specific workplace training courses that could increase the effectiveness of your workforce.

Change management training

Organisational change, although inevitable in every workplace, can cause employees a great deal of stress. A study by McKinsey and Company found that 70% of change management initiatives fail to make their intended impact. A 2012 survey explored the impact of organisational change on the stress levels of New Zealand public health workers. It found that the major contributors to stress levels were a lack of consultation and support, greater demands, fewer resources and the reactions of colleagues.

This highlights the need for a well-managed transition process, in which training can play a major role. Courses such as Change Management can help leaders to support their teams through the transition, manage their own responses to change and ensure communication is effective.

Coaching skills training

Your managers are a major asset when it comes to the productivity of your workforce. They can foster employee engagement and retention, and boost the effectiveness of your training and development strategy. So equipping them with coaching skills could have wide-ranging productivity benefits for your organisation.

A team that is coached to collaborate, learn, take on new tasks and own their personal performance will inevitably be a more productive one. When confidence, motivation and engagement are high, managers can delegate more tasks to their employees, leaving them time to focus on strategy and planning. Courses such as Coaching Skills and Principles of Coaching are an excellent starting point.

Conflict resolution training

A 2014 study found that 24% of people have experienced conflict at work that distracted or prevented them from doing their job over the past 12 months. Over a third of these conflicts continued for more than one month. Effects included missing deadlines, loss of confidence, making mistakes, taking time off or leaving the organisation. This highlights the potential productivity loss that can result from conflict.

Two thirds of the respondents who had experienced conflict had asked their managers for help, but only half of them received satisfactory support. Managers who are poorly equipped to manage conflicts within their teams may end up experiencing stress or even escalating the conflict further.

Training your managers to appropriately handle disagreements before they start to impact productivity could pay off. Workplace training courses such as Managing Team Conflict and Conflict Resolution give managers the skills to identify when and how to intervene appropriately. Training your team members could also help them to self-manage without the need for manager intervention. Courses such as Constructive Conversations could help prevent a difficult discussion escalating into a conflict.

Workplace Training Courses - Knights Agency

Effective communication training

A 2018 study by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that the top five effects of poor organisational communication are:

Added stress

Delay or failure to complete a project

Low morale

Missed performance goal

Obstacles to innovation

All of these factors feed into productivity, highlighting the importance of effective communication. Improving communication within your organisation requires a holistic approach. This may include reviewing your IT systems, updating company policies, setting up lines of accountability and offering training to your leaders. Workplace training courses such as Effective Communication are a good first step towards culture change.

Workplace training courses from a specialist provider

Knight’s Agency provides a range of specialist workplace training courses. Whether you have a clear idea of what you need, or require a little help to develop a strategy, our experts can help. We will work with you to design a programme to fit your business objectives. So whether you want to give your productivity a boost, or address a specific skills gap, get in touchvia the form below, or call 0207 112 8412.

Workplace wellbeing is a major challenge facing UK employers. Increased sickness absence, reduced productivity and increased turnover as a result of ill health cost the economy billions. Wellbeing programmes are an effective way to improve the health of your workforce, but the healthiest organisations are those in which wellbeing permeates the whole working culture. The CIPD has identified five ‘domains’ of wellbeing – health, work, values/principles, collective/social and personal growth. The model covers all aspects of an employee’s working life, and training feeds into almost every element of it. So let’s look at some practical examples of how workplace training can improve organisational wellbeing.

Training for managers

Management style is the third most common cause of stress at work. Additionally, managers are often the first port of call when a worker is struggling with stress, workload, personal issues or health problems. This can lead to sensitive conversations which may be difficult for an inexperienced supervisor to manage.

Training leaders to effectively coach and develop their team, and respond appropriately to a crisis, can therefore play a crucial role in reducing absence and improving employee wellbeing. But it could also address the growing problem of stress among middle management. The telegraph recently reported that, according on a 2018 survey by the CIPD, 28% of middle managers feel their work is impacting on their mental health. So upskilling managers to handle difficult situations could improve their coping skills and prevent them absorbing the stresses of their employees.

Workplace training courses such as Managing Team Conflict, Stress Awareness, Successful Behaviours for Leaders and Managers and Coaching Skills could help your senior staff play a leading role in fostering a healthy culture.

WorkPlace Training - Knights Agency

Creating a safer environment through workplace training

A solid health and safety training programme is essential for creating a safe environment. For further guidance on where to start, see our blog ‘What health and safety training is required for my business?’. Once you’ve conducted a risk assessment, your basic health and safety training plan will start to take shape. But beyond the immediate safety risks, consider what wellbeing challenges your workforce could face both now and in the future.

For example, a recent survey conducted by NFU Mutual has found that 53% of consumers in Yorkshire and Humberside have witnessed some form of abuse towards retail staff in the past three years. And an Australian study by The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association found that 85% of retail and fast food workers had experienced abuse from customers.

But many customer-facing employees lack the training to manage abusive behaviour from members of the public, and support following such incidents is also often lacking.

Employees who are at risk of discrimination – such as those with disabilities or those from minority ethnic groups – still face barriers to work. Mental health is an area around which there is still significant stigma, and the BBC recently reported that mental health problems cost 300,000 people their jobs last year.

Courses such as Mental Health Awareness, Assertiveness, Constructive Conversations and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion could help workers practise better self-care. It could also improve the way they interact with colleagues and customers who are at greater risk of discrimination.

‘Personal growth’ and employee wellbeing

The CIPD cites ‘personal growth’ as a key aspect of employee wellbeing. Enabling employees develop their skills through workplace training helps them feel valued, gives a greater sense of purpose and shows commitment to your staff. To find out more about how training can increase engagement and retention, read our blog post on the subject.

Essential to creating a culture of personal growth is ongoing training and development. Pre-emptive training, such as Difficult Conversations, is often provided when employees first come into their role, and it could be some time before they have cause to put their learned skills into practice. Conversely, training may be provided reactively, after the difficult situation has already arisen. It’s therefore important to combine a proactive approach with a process for ongoing coaching and continuous professional development.

Finding the right workplace training courses

For a wide variety of workplace training courses, delivered by experts, get in touch with us. Here at Knight’s Agency, we can help you develop a training programme to address the challenges facing your organisation. Call us on 0207 112 8412 to speak to one of our friendly customer service team, or email us via the form below.

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Two words that float around in healthcare are mandatory and statutory training, while many people may believe them to be the same thing, they are quite different.

What’s the difference between mandatory and statutory training?

On the surface, the words statutory and mandatory have similar meanings but there is a difference between the two when in the context of health and safety and compliance training. Statutory training relates to training this is required legally in order to protect individuals in the workplace. Statutory training applies when a statutory body has dictated that an organisation must provide training based on legislation.

Mandatory training relates to trade-specific training that the employer considers essential or compulsory for a specific job.  Mandatory training is legally required and compulsory in order for an employee to complete their job safely and efficiently. It may have come from government guidelines or legislation or it may be training that an organisation deems essential for their employees or specific job roles.

What is compulsory training?

Well if you weren’t confused already, this won’t help as some organisation will use the word ‘compulsory training’, however, the term ‘mandatory training’ is most commonly used in the care industry but is typically a ‘catch all’ phrase covering both statutory and mandatory training courses.

Regardless of the words used to describe the different types of training, statutory and mandatory training is fundamental to healthcare professionals.

Learn more about our different courses.

When appraisal time comes round, you may hear a collective sigh from employees and managers alike. It seems managers don’t want them, employees feel they don’t need them, yet almost every company still does them. So has the appraisal had its day? Or can it play a crucial role in employee training and development?

Appraisals: Vital employee development tool or ‘box-ticking exercise’?

A survey by Hay Group found that half of public sector workers and a third of business leaders see appraisals as nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. But a 2009 study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) revealed that 93% of companies use annual appraisals, and only 6% have considered dropping them. So why do employers continue to go through the motions?

Some employers may continue to offer appraisals for fear of liability. If an underperforming employee is dismissed, but argues they have not been given adequate feedback, the employer could run the risk of a dispute.

But perhaps we still offer appraisals because when done properly, they can make employees feel valued. They can also provide an opportunity for manager and employee to deeply reflect on performance, opportunities, achievements and challenges over the past six months or year.

Employee Training And Development

How appraisals can play a key role in employee training and development

While it is important to give your employees continuous feedback via regular one-to-ones, an appraisal gives them licence to take a long-sighted look at their own development. And a key part of that is training. Linking your employee training and development strategy with your appraisal process can add value to both areas.

The performance review can serve as a deep-dive into what training the employee has done, and what training they may need in order to excel at their job. This may cover specific technical skills, or it may cover wider areas such as time management or communication. This will provide a useful starting point. It may be that what the employee sees as their development areas differs from the manager’s view. So the appraisal will give both parties a chance to explore each other’s expectations and form an action plan together.

How manager training can improve the appraisal process

Training your managers to coach, support and develop their staff is vital in ensuring the appraisal process is meaningful. A coaching approach can transform performance management from a top-down affair into a collaboration. The appraisal itself can be used to agree SMART goals, but this is just one step in the employee’s ongoing learning and development journey.

Manager training courses such as Coaching Skills and Supervision and Appraisal Skills are ideal for improving performance management.

It’s also important to ensure that managers are fully trained on organisational objectives. These organisational goals should underpin team goals, and in turn, individual employee goals. If the manager is not up to speed, the employee could be sent down a development path that does not meet the wider company’s needs.

Getting help from a specialist training provider

If you need a little help to marry up your appraisal process with your employee training and development strategy, Knight’s Agency can help. Our expert agents can advise you on how to design a training programme that will complement your performance management process. We run business skills coursesfor managers and employees alike, including Supervision and Appraisal Skills. Get in touch via the form below or call us on 0207 112 8412.

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Training your staff is always a key priority and ensuring your business meets the legal requirements for training and qualifications is a must. But the law around business’ legal training responsibilities can sometimes be confusing, so it’s no surprise that companies are asking: what skill sets and mandatory training do my workforce require? Below, we look at a few of the key courses needed for businesses in many different industries.

First Aid Training:

The first and foremost mandatory training for any workforce is to do with health and safety. The Health and Safety First Aid Regulations 1981 state that employers will need to make sure that their first aid facilities, equipment and number of trained first aiders adequately and appropriately fits the workplace’s need.

With words like ‘adequate’ written in this law, it’s no surprise that businesses are often confused by what this standard actually requires. To ensure you meet the legal criteria, we suggest you undertake a risk assessment.

Through your risk assessment, carefully look at your workplace and any possible risks; do you have any lone workers? Do your staff work with high-risk or industrial machinery? Do you offer flexible working hours? If you have one current trained first-aider, how vulnerable is your business when they are on annual leave or absent with sickness?

If your business operates heavy machinery, you are legally required to have a first-aider who has been trained on a course which is HSE complaint. We offer a variety of First Aid Courses to meet your needs- including First Aid at Work Training, three or two day refresher courses and Emergency First Aid at Work Level 3 Award. If you’re still unsure about what first aid training your business needs, contact Knights Agency for advice on what mandatory training is needed for your business.

Mandatory Training

Fire Safety training:

UK law is, again, a little vague about workplace requirements when it comes to fire safety. It states that a company must provide ‘appropriate’ fire fighting equipment.  

In essence, this means that you will have to assess the risk of fire and ensure all workspaces have firefighting equipment that’s right for the job. You will have to considers the amount of staff members in the building, the office space including how many levels you operate within, any combustible materials stored in your offices and a variety of additional factors. Then, one or a team of your staff members will have to make sure that all extinguishers, hoses and sprinkler systems are in working order, as well as ensuring you have a fire marshall working at all times. To be compliant, you also must have a fire risk assessment available at all times and a fire safety log book.

To make sure that you are fully aware of all mandatory training elements to fire safety, we train staff with a variety of courses, including Fire Safety Awareness, and also Fire Marshal with and without fire extinguishers.

Food Hygiene training:

Do you work in the food industry? Then, food hygiene and safety will be top of your training priorities.

The law states that food businesses must make sure that any staff member who is working with food are supervised effectively and trained in food hygiene. They should also have clear and relevant training for their role.

Businesses must develop and maintain food safety management procedures to ensure they meet the legal criteria.

We offer various courses on food hygiene and safety, including Food Safety Awareness or Food Safety – level, 2, 3, or 4.

For further information on mandatory training courses for your business, contact Knights Agency and our friendly team will ensure you get the right advice.

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Compliance training is about as ubiquitous as training can get; most organisations have to deliver on at least some form of mandatory training to ensure they are operating legally. It’s not new. We’ve all got to do it. But in so many contexts it’s just inadequate. Learners hate it. You probably hate it too.

But if we get it wrong, compliance training has real potential to fail the very people it’s designed to protect. At best, your learners are bored, disengaged and uninterested. At worst, it can cost people their lives. So why are we treating compliance like the black sheep of the learning world?

Boring your learners is risky business

Did you know that in 2020 38.8 million working days were lost due to work-related ill health and non-fatal workplace injuries? Much of this could have been prevented with a considered and modern approach to compliance training and risk minimisation.

We’ve seen it time and time again. Critical compliance training isn’t given the due care and attention it deserves. Organisations serve up lengthy, boring elearning modules and tedious, tenuous two-day classroom sessions. These approaches get bums on seats and fingers a’clickin, but they lose learners’ hearts and minds.

These types of learning experiences are a sure-fire way to disconnect with our people, which is incredibly problematic for any learning intervention, but especially so for compliance. That’s because if they’re bored, they’re not paying attention. If they’re not paying attention, they’re not learning. And if they’re not learning, how can we expect them to put this into practice on the job?

When it comes to compliance, employees and their needs are not catered for or prioritised. By not focusing on the experiences they’re having when they’re learning, we’re losing our learners at the first hurdle. And risk is increasing as a consequence.

How to bring compliance training back to life

Putting our learners first is one of the most missed areas of compliance training. What’s going to pique their interest? How are we going to keep them engaged if there is a huge volume of information to work through? What is the most optimal way to help them learn?

Our latest ebook highlights five key ways to inject some life into your compliance training strategies to ensure your people are protected, safe and most importantly, learning. Let’s explore three of them here.

1.     Get their attention

There’s a lot of talk about the dwindling attention spans of today’s workforce at the moment. But this isn’t strictly true. It’s not that attention spans are diminishing, the issue is that there is more vying for our attention now than ever before. And we – as humans – quite simply do not have the capacity to pay attention to it all. So that means your training offering (yes, even the compliance part) is competing with your learner’s day job, news publications, social media, their children, mortgage and so much more.

Find out how to get their attention and keep it in the ebook.

2.     Blend it better

Often L&D professionals fall victim to thinking one learning intervention is sufficient. But this will never change behaviour. And when the topic is as critical as most compliance training is – changing behaviour should be the priority. Which is why blended learning is always a great approach to compliance training.

Use our ebook to discover how to create modern blended learning solutions which get results.

3.     Ignite their emotions

Learner emotions are often overlooked in training – especially when it comes to mandatory or compliance topics. But if you tap into learner emotions, you’ll be engaging your people on a deeper, more meaningful level. The truth is your learners do not care about compliance training. They aren’t going to be self-motivated to get up and complete the latest mandatory course.

Learn how to engage and connect with your people by downloading the ebook today.

So, if you want to get better results from your mandatory training, burn the rule book. Break (or at least bend) the rules that you’ve created for compliance and instead look to your learners. Focus on engaging them and making their experiences fun and memorable. Focus on connecting them with risk in a meaningful way. Focus on them.

We promise you, the results will speak for themselves.

If you want to change your approach to compliance, our new ebook will help you navigate these new waters. Download it now using the link below!

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Compliance training is a funny old thing. For some reason, us lot in Learning and Development seem to all abide by a barrel load of unspoken rules. Rules which perhaps made sense twenty years ago, but certainly aren’t doing us any favours today. In many cases we don’t even challenge these rules; we just blindly continue to adhere to them, often to the detriment of the training itself. So why are we sticking to the rules when we know they no longer serve us?

These rules are problematic for a modern L&D function. They disengage audiences, increase risk and then cause compliance training to fail. So if we want different results, it’s time to break the rules. Burn the rule book. Start afresh and truly transform training. It’s time to rescind the rules and forget everything you thought you knew about modern compliance training.

So, if you want to evolve your approaches in compliance training, here are the four rules you need to break today.

Rule 1: The subject matter is serious, so the training has to be too

Just because we’re saving lives and supporting a risk minimisation strategy does NOT mean that your course content, delivery method and approach have to be staunch, dry and banal. If reducing risk is your primary goal, then you need to ensure you are getting (and keeping!) your learners’ attention.

And that means saying goodbye to boring training. That means no more 100 slide elearning sessions and it definitely means saying “adios” to tedious, tiring training sessions. Bye-bye, terrible training.

The truth is, somehow we’ve made a strange leap from subject matter to delivery method and it’s done some serious damage to compliance’s reputation. There’s a reason compliance training gets a bad rap – and it’s literally because of this rule.

New Rule: Compliance Can Be Fun (seriously!)

So instead of boring training, consider how you can inject life, flavour and fun into your learning experiences. How can you make the subject matter memorable and accessible to the person when they need it most? Ask yourself: “How can I make my compliance training engaging, interactive and interesting? ”

Rule 2: Compliance training immediately makes people competent

When it comes to reducing risk, this rule is rather risky. Namely, because it’s entirely incorrect and continues to be perpetuated throughout the L&D industry. A common scenario is serving up some mandatory training or elearning. The learner does said training and POOF! they’re compliant. Sure, they’re compliant on paper, but that’s really all you’re going to get from the training if this is the only learning experience you provide.

Single learning experiences do not change behaviour. And that’s because it’s very rare that a single learning intervention is used to solve a complex learning challenge. We know it does not work. So we ask you, why are we letting compliance training fall through the cracks when it’s arguably the most important of all?

New Rule: Blended learning is better

Take a pragmatic approach to your compliance training and combine a diverse range of learning-rich experiences including classroom training, elearning, mentoring, virtual live training, webinars and more. Spread these experiences over a period of time and watch your risk rates rapidly decline.

Rule 3: Completed learning leaves us risk-free

This one sticks around like a bad smell. We know how it’s come about. An organisation has legally mandatory training to deliver to their employees. Their Compliance or Risk Managers rightly need a way to evidence that training has been delivered, just in case they ever get audited. So L&D fixates on the completion, the act of doing the training, and somehow confuses that with knowledge acquisition and application.

Because compliance training is typically measured by attendance or ‘completions’, we’ve started to believe that the completion is evidence that learning took place and indeed that the employee will be able to apply that learning in the workplace.

Hello Captain Obvious. That’s not how learning works. Just because someone clicked through an elearning module, or sat in a classroom for a day, does not mean that they’ve learned something. This is a dangerous place for us to be, particularly when trying to tackle subject matter as significant as resuscitation or first aid.

New Rule: Make space for application

Someone undertaking learning doesn’t ensure learning transfer or indeed guarantee that they are going to be able to recall the knowledge when they need it. So rather than focusing on completions to minimise risk, explore how you can extend your compliance training into a programme that allows opportunities for application on the job and makes use of mentorship and managerial support.

Rule 4: Compliance training makes people confident

Imagine this as a scenario.

You’ve attended a really engaging first aid training course as part of your compliance training at work. You pay attention within the session and feel like the experience was meaningful, memorable and useful. You leave feeling like you know how to deliver CPR to someone should they ever need it.

A few months pass, and one day you’re in the office kitchen. It’s after hours and a handful of people are burning the midnight oil. Suddenly one of your colleagues collapses. You intervene and desperately try to recall what you learned in the classroom. You can recall some of it, but having only ever practised on a dummy three months ago, you don’t feel very confident undertaking CPR. You call an ambulance and wait.

This is a realistic example of how we deliver compliance training at the moment. If we’ve broken rules 1-3, it’s likely that the training your people received was engaging, practical and memorable. So why aren’t they comfortable with applying the skills they learned in the classroom?

Because they aren’t confident in their skills and haven’t ever used them in a real-life example.

New Rule: Regular refreshers are essential

If we want our people to feel comfortable, confident and competent in using their newly acquired skills, we need to ensure those skills remain fresh and front of mind. We also need to make sure that they have chances to explore and execute these skills in as many on-the-job situations as possible.

Explore how you can use virtual experiences, VR or even experiential learning to help support their learning and make sure you are touching base with these skills quarterly so that they have ample opportunities to retain information and apply it.

Turning risk into opportunity

There are so many reasons why our compliance training isn’t effective. But one thing is for sure, breaking the rules above is a sure-fire way to start tackling the rising risk challenge in your organisation and better connect with your people.

So don’t wait to seize the opportunities risk is giving us by taking the biggest risk of all: challenging the status quo. Trust us, your audiences will thank you.

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Have you ever told your people about an upcoming training course and seen them all roll their eyes in unison? I’m sure you have. But don’t worry, this isn’t necessarily your fault. Over the last few decades, classroom training has become synonymous with boredom. Images spring to mind of an instructor standing at the front of a room, lecturing people on how to do a specific task better. But what if we told you that training doesn’t have to be that way?

In fact, here at Knights Absorb, we create learning experiences that are so good, people actually want to take part in them. And you don’t have to take our word for it… 97% of the people that we’ve trained gave us a 5-star review. (That’s more than 130,000 people if you were wondering!)

But how do we do it? Well, we first combine our subject matter expertise and passion for all things training, with the best technology and learning methodologies to create training that makes a lasting impact. And then we tailor it to your organisation, including interactive, fun and memorable activities to ensure that delegates have fun, retain knowledge – and ultimately change their behaviours. And this can only happen if we stay true to these 5 statements that make up the DNA of Knights Absorb:

1.    We never compromise on quality

Okay, we know most training providers will claim to provide high-quality experiences. But our quality is truly second to none. And that’s because we have a thorough, detailed quality assurance plan in place for each training course we run. This process includes sending each course and content pack to our Head of Quality, Dee, to ensure that it meets our high expectations. We then organise a trial training session, delivered to our clients’ stakeholder team, where we garner any feedback and note where any fine-tuning is needed. But it doesn’t stop there, if we receive delegate feedback throughout the process that is a cause for concern, we work with our clients to solve the issue.

Ensuring high quality throughout…

Outcomes First Group’s Training Support Team Leader, Emma Short, tends to agree: “Compared to other external training providers that we use, I feel that Knights Absorb goes above and beyond to understand our business, and also the difficulties that we face. The team is always on hand to help, even at the last minute, and always look to provide solutions to problems that we are facing, to ensure that our staff remain compliant in the training that we provide. The Knights Absorb team really do care about us, not only as clients, but also as people, and that goes a long way in this world!”

2.    We never provide generic content

When it comes to workplace learning, content has to be relevant and applicable to your organisation to make an impact. And that’s not possible with content that’s recycled from one organisation to the next. Here at Knights Absorb, we take core content and tailor it to our clients’ organisations – yep, even mandatory training! By taking content and making it highly relevant, practical and actionable for your people, your delegates know exactly how to apply the knowledge and information they’ve learnt to their day job.

The impact of tailored content…

Before partnering with Knights Absorb, The Priory Group was in a sticky situation. They had numerous training providers and huge inconsistencies across the L&D function – which ultimately resulted in lower compliance rates than desirable. From the start of this long-standing partnership, we have created training content that is truly personalised to the experiences of The Priory Group’s employees. And this has had a resounding impact on compliance rates and learner engagement. In fact, in the first year of our partnership we boosted compliance rates by 53% – impressive, isn’t it?

3.    We always work with the best subject matter experts

Our subject matter experts truly set us apart from other training providers. We have experts in a multitude of topics from Fire Safety to Safeguarding, who work with us when we create any training intervention. That means that the courses our clients receive are not only entirely tailored to their organisation (see above!) but they’re also the best-in-the-business when it comes to facts and figures.

The difference our subject matter experts make…

It seems obvious that working with subject matter experts will increase the quality of training content. But we believe our highly-qualified specialists truly transform our offering to our clients.

Kavita Mistry, Learning and Development Manager at Elysium Healthcare, benefits from both our SMEs, as well as us collaborating closely with their own: “Knights Absorb are a brilliant training provider to work with. Very personable and approachable – if we have any issues, they try to resolve them or meet us in the middle so neither company is at a loss. Knights are willing to create courses to our standards with the input from our subject matter experts which we haven’t experienced much with other providers and that is why they’re one of our preferred suppliers!”

4.    We’re always flexible and approachable

Many of our clients have faced turbulent times since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many had to pivot and adapt their approach to training to cater for new social distancing requirements, and some had to change entire programmes due to new legislation. And of course – this had to be done as soon as possible, to ensure the health and wellbeing for our clients and their customers. We embraced this head-on. We worked with each client on their unique needs to make sure their new, adapted or tweaked programmes were rolled out as soon as possible, regardless of the circumstance.

Our flexible approach helps in tough times…

The Four Seasons Healthcare Group needed our support during the pandemic and left these kind words in response to the service we delivered: “Knights Absorb worked with us to define a training solution that could be delivered in a ‘Covid-Safe’ manner, that would enable us to reach our teams at our target sites within a tight time frame. They trained 277 of our team members across a 6 week period, providing the reassurance we needed to keep our teams and residents safe as well as ensuring we were meeting regulatory requirements.”

5.    We build real relationships with our clients

Taking a personal approach to training development means different things to different people. But to us, it means getting to know your organisation, your delegates and most of all – you. And we don’t mean your job role and your KPIs, we mean who you are as a person. We count our clients as friends and we know that this is the basis for the best, long-lasting partnerships (that make the most impact!)

Don’t just take our word for it…

“The team loves knowing about your team on a personal level and meeting for lunch. All of those things make our partnership better, more productive and easier. It feels like we are all in it together even though we are provider and customer. We appreciate that we can ring you for help and advice.” – Emma McCarthy, Head of Learning and Development, Aspris.

So if you want to experience the Knights Absorb difference for yourself, get in touch, for a free consultation we’d love to hear from you and discuss your organisation’s training needs.

Or, if you like to find out more about how we’re transforming training for our clients, read The Priory Group success story HERE

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Keeping Children Safe in Education has been released and came into effect yesterday. Here are some main updates and a link to the full guidance:

Full Guidance

• School governors and trustees must receive safeguarding training, including online safety training. This should be received as part of their induction and be regularly updated.
• Guidance highlights the importance of talking to parents about children’s access to online sites when away from school.
• ‘Peer-on-peer’ abuse has been amended to ‘child-on-child’ abuse.
• To encourage safer recruiting, new staff can be subject to digital background check, and CVs can only be accepted alongside a full application form.
• A time constraint of 5 days has been added to pupil data transfer.
• An ‘appropriate adult’ must be in attendance during police investigations.
• New information has been added to explain the impact of domestic abuse.
• The DfE sexual violence and sexual harassment guidance has been incorporated in the KCSIE guidance.

New Government guidance: Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022

To ensure compliance with the guidance, it’s important to look over your policies and procedures, and see how they match with the new guidance.

If you find training is required to fill in some of the gaps, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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