Employer's Guide to Training Providers

Introduction

Welcome to the Employer's Guide to Training Providers. Aimed at employers, the Guide helps you choose the most suitable training provider for your business and workforce needs. It provides you with questions to ask and things to consider when looking for training provision.

There is a search facility to help you find providers who offer courses on a subject of your choice.

In addition, in the South West, we are running a pilot to try out an employer feedback facility. This will help employers differentiate between training on the principle that if one employer has found a particular course useful, others are also likely to. Click here (or on the "Feedback about training" link on the left) to find out more and to enter your feedback about training you have purchased or arranged for your employees (or for yourself).

What is Good Training?
Training is good if it gives you what you need, but this can mean different things to different employers. You are the best person to decide whether a training provider is right for your business.

For example, a good training provider may be one who:

• has premises that learners can get to easily
• achieves high pass rates
• has trainers with recent experience of a particular industry
• is good at getting younger or older learners interested and motivated, so that they complete their courses
• can provide training at the workplace rather than the trainer's premises

Some of these tests for checking the quality of trainers are covered by the inspections carried out by the ALI and Ofsted. You may find it helpful to check out the inspection results for a provider you have chosen.

In this Guide we have set out the sort of questions you can ask a provider (and some to ask yourself). This will help you find out which training provider best suits your requirements.