How can I tell before we commit whether a workshop will be useful?
You can tell before you commit whether a workshop is likely to be useful by asking the person leading it what your team will do during the session and what will be different afterward. Their answers indicate whether the workshop was designed around your team's work or is delivered the same way to every organization.
Questions to ask before you agree to the workshop
- What will my team be able to do afterward that they can't do now?
- Will participants practice with our own data, documents, or situations, or with examples from somewhere else?
- How much of the time is practice and discussion, and how much is presentation?
- What will participants take back to their positions?
- What support is available afterward if people get stuck applying it?
- What do you need to know about our team, our work, and our schedule before you design the session?
The last question is especially revealing. A workshop leader who asks nothing about your organization before the session may be planning to deliver the same content everywhere. If your employees have reacted poorly to training before, Why do employees roll their eyes at our training programs? examines why that happens.
What should my team leave a workshop with?
Your team should leave a workshop with something they'll use in their daily work and a next step that a specific person is responsible for. What that looks like depends on the skill. For example, after a workshop on using customer or employee feedback, it might be a template for summarizing comments each month. After a workshop on surveys, it might be a revised version of a survey your organization already distributes, and after a workshop on reporting, a one-page format your leadership team has agreed to review.
The next step matters as much as the material. Before the workshop ends, participants should know who will use the new template or survey first, when they'll use it, and whom they can ask when questions come up. Without that commitment, even a useful session can fade once everyone returns to a full inbox. If the skill requires more than one session to become familiar, ask whether the workshop includes follow-up, such as a second session or a conversation several weeks later.
What does pulling my team off their work actually cost?
Pulling your team off their work costs the hours everyone spends in the workshop, plus the work that's delayed, covered by someone else, or left undone while they're away. Add those together before you decide, alongside any fee. For example, five employees in a four-hour workshop represent twenty hours of the team's time, and that's worth knowing when you weigh what the workshop will contribute.
You can often reduce that cost without reducing the value. Schedule the workshop when employees can give it their attention, avoiding a production push, the end of a quarter, or your busiest week of the month. No one should schedule a focus group with students during finals week, and the same principle applies here. Ask whether the content requires a full day or could be divided into shorter sessions with time between them to practice. And invite the people who will apply the skill, instead of inviting everyone by default. Should we train one data champion or the whole team? covers how to decide who attends.
If your staff is already stretched thin and you're uncertain whether any training is worth it right now, Is data training worth it when my staff is already stretched thin? addresses that question directly.
The Grantibly perspective
Angelika's perspective
We value practical relevance over academic theory. When we design training, we want it to be practical and engaging, to respect employees' time, and to connect directly to the realities of the organization. That's why we begin with the client's situation before we choose what to teach.
Our clients are busy. They're running programs, managing staff, serving customers or communities, and trying to keep projects moving. A workshop should help them do that work better, not give them another requirement to manage. Work should be proportionate to the need: respect people's time, and never impose a large engagement where a focused one fits.
As former professors and educators, we also pay attention to the real conditions that affect whether people can participate. We would never schedule a focus group during finals week, and the same thinking applies to a workshop scheduled during a team's busiest week.
