When we to deliver training to you, things normally go right. Sometimes, though they don’t. To be precise three times in the last twenty years.
Below are three short stories explaining what went wrong and how we put it right
Medications Training – January 2017
We offered to run an online face to face session with one of our existing clients. They wanted a medications course for their nurses. We all agreed how it would run. The trainer spoke to our client before the training confirming everything and making sure the set up was correct.
What could go wrong? Well on the day the manager of the home just felt that the session’s content wasn’t pitch right. We got an email from the home asking for their money back.
What happened next? We called the home and found out exactly why they were unhappy. We told them that we wouldn’t expect them to pay for something they were unhappy with. Made a complete refund. As a company we sat down and figured out what went wrong. We are looking to book the correct session soon.
Falls exercise leader training – January 2016
The room was full with staff waiting to be trained. The only problem was, there was no trainer. The training had been booked for months. The care home manager’s admin had confirmed everything was fine with trainer the previous week. 9 am came had went. 9.30 arrived and still waiting, could the trainer be stuck in traffic?
Now the manager was panicking. She had invited other managers on to the course. She had been responsible for finding the trainer, who wasn’t there. She quietly got up and went to her office to call the trainer. The phone rang and then she heard a familiar voice. The trainer’s. A thought rushed through her mind. “This isn’t good, he lives three hundred miles away”. She ask where he was, to which he answered “at home”. She calmly asked “why are you in Essex and not Yorkshire?” The answer came back “I’m not supposed to be with you guys to tomorrow, so I’m travelling up today”.
What happened next?
The care home manager was right, we were wrong. We apologised on the phone. Put in writing it was completely our mistake. The trainer got in the car that morning and drove the three hundred miles from home to the venue.
The Manager was kind enough to see me. The trainer made a face to face apology taking full responsibility for what happened. Apologised to the admin for any embarrassment caused. In the way of apology we gave over £150 of handouts free of change. Made a £50 donation to the nursing homes residents’ activities fund. Finally the trainer offered to run the training day valued at £750 free of charge on a day that met the home’s schedule.
They accepted and on the day the trainer made an apology to the group taking full responsibility for the booking error. Delivered the training as promised. At the end of the day The Manager asked the trainer if he thought he should be paid. The reply was “Only if you think the training was worth the effort and disappointment it took to get it”.
The home paid and also reviewed the training in our reviews page. If you look for it you will find it.
Train the trainer moving and handling of people – June 2014
The Head of Clinical Care asked us to set up some moving and handling of people training for their staff. The company ran three homes looking after older people in residential and nursing settings. The Head of Clinical Care asked “could you run some figures on this for me?” The figures suggested that it would be cheaper for them to train up their own team of in house trainers. It was agreed this and we launched the five day training course.
After three runs of the course the feedback came back that four of the newly qualified trainers weren’t very willing to train staff. They felt nervous and unsure. Our client rang us and asked what we could do to help.
What happened next?
We arranged a face to face meeting and put together an action plan. All free of charge. It was agreed that support would be put into place for those that needed it. This took the shape of:
The trainers got on their own feet and now deliver the Moving and handling training in their respective units.
We are happy that the support worked and the client is happy too.
So as we said at the beginning of this, we don’t always get it right but we always put it right afterwards. We work hard to make sure that mistakes are very few and as you can see in the last 3 years we have had one mistake per year. We think that is pretty good considering with have worked with over 500 clients.