In the current economic climate, it's still tough for businesses so training and marketing budgets are under pressure. Indeed, a recent poll by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that 78% of Public Sector managers had less to spend on training in 2011 than they did in 2010. The picture is likely to be very similar this year, and this is NOT restricted to the public sector. Private sector businesses are also having to make very tough choices about where to invest the limited funds that they have.

Many business owners and marketers have quickly realised that social media offers many of the benefits of traditional marketing for a fraction of the cost. However, training is still considered to be an 'all or nothing' activity, but it doesn't have to be.  

Much training is still 'ego-led' by those trainers who claim to be experts, can talk for hours about how wonderful they are, and are gracious enough to share a few morsels of their experience for a substantial fee. Other training requires a significant commitment of time (by the employee), money AND time (for qualification-based courses) or technology (by the firm), which even large firms simply can't afford these days.

The problem is, that you can't just stop training either. Ok, you can put it on hold for a short while, but if you stop, your best people will start looking around for jobs in companies that will invest in them. And we all know that it costs more to recruit than to retain. If your people don't leave, standards will start to slip and your company will begin to look very second-rate compared to your competitors, and soon those 'savings' made on training are translating into loss of business. It is a vicious circle.

Power Hour Training sessions were designed to fill a need, and provide a choice to companies who thought there might not be one. Bite-size, cost effective training materials that you can use yourself, or (if you prefer) we can deliver at your workplace.

Think where we would be if the only clothes we could buy were individually designed and tailored clothes from a top fashion designer? Many people whould only have one outfit, and half of us would be going around naked! Thank goodness for Matalan, Primark and George. We can all be clothed, at a reasonable cost, and still 'treat' ourselves to the odd designer outfit when we can justify it.

Thank goodness for Power Hour, it allows you to keep training in the tough times until you can get that eutopia of bespoke, accredditted, fully-funding training.

To find out more about out licence-free bite-size training materials, visit http://www.power-hour.co.uk 

SPECIAL OFFER - EXCUSIVE TO THE BEST OF WARRINGTON READERS AND MEMBERS

Readers of this blog can get 3 sets of bite-size training materials for the price of 2, simply by typing in the code BOW342 at the checkout.

OR

If you wish to sample our LIVE training service, simply mention the Best of Warrington when you contact us, and we will deliver one session for £125 instead of the normal £175.