It is often too easy to opt for the easy choice; in industry this can be disastrous.  For some years anecdotal evidence from numerous industrial accident investigations has tended to show that a key organisational failure area is the selection of a suitable educator.  This is not to say that the organisations involved do not provide training; nor indeed does it reflect on the identified training need.  Usually the weakness revolves around the selection of the educator and their ability to teach.  No organisation would dream of employing an unqualified accountant, the potential for loss is obvious; so why is there less scrutiny when it comes to those who train or teach others.  Effectively lack of understanding of how to present, assess, develop learning regimes and measure outcomes, leads to a weak point within any organisation.  We have all suffered the death knell of chalk and talk and repetitive slide presentation.  


What is worse is the fact that often the organisation involved believes that it has correctly trained its staff.  In further education in the UK tutors are normally required to hold some form of formally recognised academic qualification in teaching as well as their qualifications in their subjects.  Thus we can argue that they are competent to teach their subject.  We would be shocked if a geography teacher was tasked with teaching our youngsters with first year degree level maths and worst still if it was someone with no educational qualifications.  So how is it that we are happy to accept the educational abilities of trainers who hold no qualifications in education and who provide our staff with say confined space training or indeed gas or noise measurement or dare we say accident investigation training?  


The following question will arise; what about tool box talks, managerial discussions and similar training sessions held in-house.  Are these not training?  Surely these presenters should not have to hold a formal qualification.  There is little problem here so long as the organisation can prove that they are competent and have a good track record of success.  So long as the organisation can demonstrate their competence there should be no allegations along the lines of ‘My client did not understand the lesson in the way that it is now being presented’. 

Kinaston Associates trainers are all qualified in their subjects and are also fully qualified teachers with experience in adult education.  Sadly during investigations they have come across the result of to many instances of training courses given by unqualified educators.  Thus when choosing a trainer or a course from an external organisation, please ensure that the presenter is qualified to teach; the worst case scenario would be to try to justify the selection of an incompetent provider when stood in the witness box of a Court.  It is not good enough to be presented with the CV’s of those who ‘may’ turn up to do the training; firstly ensure that the person who arrives is known to your organisation and who you expected.  Ensure that they have a proven track record, and ideally that they are accredited by either a professional or academic body and then, please interrogate them (or get someone to interrogate them for you) before you let them loose on your staff.