Training Programmes
Business Management Skills for local government staff (inter-authority training)
Most staff in local government possess professional, technical and administrative skills. They are often qualified and experienced in these skills and they are often promoted because of these skills and their suitability for taking on more responsibility.
However, they also need business management knowledge and skills, especially if they are promoted into senior or supervisory positions. They need a better understanding of the business environment including; how to increase efficiency, deliver projects effectively and manage change. The sorts of skills required include:
- understanding, influencing and communicating the authority's corporate objectives and priorities
- analysing situations and making decisions
- organising, scheduling, allocating and monitoring work
- monitoring and managing performance
- working with and influencing others, via supervision, leadership, team working and negotiation
- managing resources, including setting and monitoring budgets and managing staff and other resources
- managing projects and meeting deadlines
- facilitating processes of change in complex organisations
- implementing and monitoring improvements such as those required by the Comprehensive Area Assessment.
Local government managers do not necessarily possess all of these skills. Crucially, they are too important to be left to chance, to be picked up as you go along. Through this series of focused one-day workshops, it is TRA's aim to take the mystique out of business management.
The workshop format involves:
- limited numbers: a maximum of 20 participants, to allow for a good level of experience interchange amongst participants
- workshop presenters with lengthy local government experience at a senior level
- a variety of training mechanisms: input from our presenters, group discussion, exercises, case studies etc
- pre-course preparation sufficient to allow some degree of calibration to specific needs, discussion and interaction throughout
- post-course documentation and reading specification.
Our intention is to provide an informal but structured environment, where participants will learn from one another as well as from the presenter.
To reserve places on any of the workshops in this series please use this general booking form.
Please note that all of these workshops can also be run on an in-house basis for individual authorities (or a group of authorities). You might also be interested in our series of in-house workshops on Management Concepts and Skills for local government staff, covering topics such as Personal Effectiveness and Time Management, Supervision and Leadership, and Leading and Working in Teams.