Organisations do not have the necessary time to invest to get key employees up to speed at managing staff and resources. Organisations often have to choose between investing time in helping people develop and actually doing the job. Good quality people are difficult to attract and even more difficult to retain. In Financial services this is true at all levels of management from Fund Manager, Team Leaders and to Call Centre and Clerical staff. This is shared in many other industries especially those that are labour intensive. The Health Service and organisations in the Voluntary and the Third Sector also experience this conflict between 'investing in staff development' or 'leaving them to do their job'.

Those in most demand by employers are obviously most open to change employer. The motives for job moves are certainly not just monetary in nature. Staff are looking for employers who will invest in their development and help them maximise their potential. Staff expect their employers to provide them with the best experience and the the best training. It is well known that Organisations that focus upon helping employees develop to their true potential will attract and retain the best people in the industry. To achieve this organisations have to reject the old slower models and processes of training and development. Learning can be installed and transferred at a much higher pace and rate if the learning processes are designed specifically to focus on implementation of ideas rather than just knowledge retention. Most of training is a waste in many businesses. Participants retain or apply very little of what they pick up attending the tired old training events. What is required is the application of accelerated learning to the design of people development. Few can provide this facility or service.

An aspect of our unique approach is to produce the results faster than the traditional training and development route. Too often, we hear that training outcomes are slow to gather momentum. We believe that people can learn faster than the traditional training events allow. Our focus is upon supporting people to learn quickly and effectively, at the same time taking a balanced view to equipping them with both the ‘career’ and the’ life’ skills. We believe that training often takes longer than is required and is mostly geared around the styles and the knowledge of the ‘trainer’ than focusing on the recipient - the needs and the demands of the learner.

Fundamentally, we believe that Learning goes far beyond the traditional Training and Development strategies and should be driven by the following issues:

• Too many people equate attendance on events with effectiveness – there is no correlation between ‘being there’ and ‘ achievement’. Design the events to lead to specific observable and testable outcomes.

• People learn faster than their tutors or trainers can often train or teach. Let's focus on creating a learning experience that impacts actual performance in their role as manager or leader and focus less on the trainer as mentor.

• Trainees style of learning often conflicts with how a learning process is managed by traditional trainers. Address training design by accelerating the process of learning through innovative learning solutions.

• Learning takes place equally outside as inside the classroom. Ensure that pre and post course activity is engaging, motivating and wins the attention of all learners to want to actively participate and experiment with improving their performance.

• People can develop their own individualised development with coaching and mentoring – they don’t need old training techniques of ‘telling and selling’

• Development outcomes can be produced faster than the traditional Training route. Apply principles of accelerated learning to the acquisition of new behaviours.

• Development should be geared to the needs of those wanting to learn rather than gaining a ‘pass rate’ for attendance only. Support delegates in developing realistic and practical action plans.

• Development has to be tailored specifically to the learning outcomes of those participating.