Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-05-17 09:32:52 - Graham Ellis
I'm a great believer in "Raising the standards of professionalism in training" - that's the byline of the Institute of IT Training - so when they approached us about becoming a certified member, I listened carefully.
Cynics will say that you "get nowt for nowt in this life" ... and indeed that seems to be the case with the IITT. Their sales rep who I spoke with wrote of an annual fee of over two thousand pounds, and looking around their web site and others associated with it, I would also need to spend 100 pounds or so on annual membership for myself, around 1400 pounds on a course to prepare me for an assessment, and 250 pounds on that assessment. So that's approaching 4000 pounds, two thirds of which isn't a one off payment but an annual expense. That's before you consider the cost of my time / being out of the office and not generating other business for a week. All in all, I estimate that to go for the scheme would cost 35 to 45 pounds per training day that I give.
Is it worth it? What would we get? What would our customers get?
Our delegates would get something, but not a lot. Reviewing the list of topics assessed by the IITT, I feel confident that most are considered already in what we can do - and our feedback confirms this. But there is always scope for improvement. Link - what is assessedLink - learner types used in that assessment
New booking contacts would get re-assurance, knowing that they were booking with a member of a professional organisation. Whether that would be real or imagined, I don't know - especially since we already subcontract training for a number of the IITT registered companies ... and we know of others who's business practises such as course cancellation that we do not agree with, and where we set a higher standard of customer service.
We might gain some business. The salesman looking to sell the IITT membership to me suggested that 80% of companies who book training look for IITT membership before they book. Hmmm - that seems a very high figure to me - indeed curiously high as I can't recall anyone actually asking me ...
I have concluded, then, that it would be excellent to raise the standards of professionalism in training. But I'm unconvinced that joining the IITT would make a significant difference in our case, and certainly not enough difference to justify the cost. Of course, it would be very nice to be invited to plush "Trainer of the year" award ceremonies, but personally that's not the sort of motivation I need - I'm motivated by happy delegates and seeing and hearing how well people progress with what they taught them, and having them come back on other courses and sent their colleagues.
I wrote to the IITT's salesman to tell him that the concept is a great one, but the implementation method and cost don't fit well with us. He didn't even bother to acknowledge my letter, which at least confirmed in my mind that my decision was the right one.
Clearly the views on this page are my own personal ones, and their relevance or otherwise has been evaluated based on our own customer base and needs, and the contacts I have had with them. You may have a different metric / experience
The IITT is a subsidiary of the National Computing Centre Ltd, and its web site is at www.iitt.org.uk
A random selection of trainer evaluation criteria ...