Media Helping Media

Media training should be about investing in people --- your staff. They should be your most precious resource. Without them, you will struggle to deliver your service to your customers (your audience). They are the team members you have selected, or inherited, who, alongside you, will help you achieve your objectives. If they have had a stake in developing those objectives, all the better.

You need motivated team members who are clear about what is required of them, and who are totally signed up to helping you achieve the unit and company's goals.

They can only do that if they know what those goals are and are aware of their part in achieving them. Don't presume they are able to read your mind. Make things extremely clear.

Staff training best practice

Media training, badly done, can damage a news organisation. Media training which focuses on staff development, and which is tied to the media organisation's core editorial proposition and business plan, is essential.

The training you offer your staff needs to ensure they have the skills to do the job they are being asked to do. If you want your media organisation to grow, your staff must blossom in order to help you take it to levels you might not have previously foreseen it reaching.

Appraisals

The best training programmes emerge from a media organisation’s appraisal system and are carried out internally, with perhaps a few outside trainers brought in to offer a broader view.

Each member of staff will have an annual appraisal. These will usually involve quarterly reviews, where performance is assessed against agreed objectives.

The purpose of appraisals is to help staff achieve their full potential within the business. The appraisal system will reveal areas where staff need to develop and where their talents can be best exploited.

A healthy appraisal system will be closely linked to a solid training programme which focuses on business need and personal development.

It is not a stand-off and should not be viewed as a dressing-down. It is an opportunity to work closely with a valued member of your team and work with them to discover how best they can help you achieve your goals and for you to help them to fulfil their potential.

Business-focused training

For all the following training objectives you need to:

• Ensure the details are written up in no more than 10 concise bullet points and published for all staff to see
• Create a series of workshops where these points are discussed and developed
• Ensure all staff attend at least once a year.

Invest in staff

Your staff will respond better to the objectives you set for them (and your appraisal of their work) if you treat them as a valued asset. If you include them in the way the news organisation is developing you might find they respond better to the challenges you set for them.

To INVEST in your staff you should:

• Involve: Make sure they feel part of the news organisation by feeding them a steady flow of information via the Intranet, newsletters and regular meetings
• Nurture: They need to feel that the organisation they are working for has their interests at heart and will help them grow in their careers
• Value: Never view your staff as numbers in a work roster; value them as individuals who can bring different and fresh perspectives to the company
• Engage: Ask them for their views and when they offer them, take them seriously and implement the best ideas
• Support: Make sure you take time to listen and understand when they are finding things tough, don't just leave it to HR (the human resource department).
• Training: You are more likely to attract and retain staff if you have a reputation for offering the best in-house and off-site training.

Involve

This is probably one of the most important areas. If your staff don’t understand what the business needs from them then the rest of the training won’t make sense.

Without that understanding they won’t see the importance of your objectives and their part in realising them. If you take time to include them with regular updates about what is happening they will be better motivated and more likely to fulfil their potential.

Nurture

Your staff should always be looking for advancement, whether it is professional development in terms of learning, financial growth, or promotion. You might not be in a position to offer great financial rewards; this might not always be their main concern anyway. Some will thrive on being given extra responsibility. Some will want to feel that you are interested in their development. Some will want to be stretched. All will want to be in an environment where they feel they can develop.

Value

It's too easy to hire staff because you have a job to be done. Of course that is always the case, but there is more to it than that. Always hire staff to do the next job along the line. Don't hire with only the current vacancy in mind. Yes, you will have to fill that role, but you don't want to hire someone to do the same job for the rest of their lives. You need to hire for the future, too. If you hire with that in mind you are more likely to value your staff and they are more likely to pay you back by taking responsibility.

Engage

It will always be hard to motivate staff if they feel they have no say in the running of the organisation. You need to engage them at every level. Clearly, senior managers will have to make many of the hard business decisions, but never be afraid of devolving responsibility and asking staff for their views. You might find that they respond in a far more positive and helpful way than you imagined they would. Engaging the staff in your media organisation's business makes them more likely to go the extra mile when needed.

Support

Too many managers go cold and back off when a member of staff is in trouble. You need to be there for them, or at least ensure that someone is. It's not about becoming an agony aunt, it's about helping them through the tough times, understanding the issues they face, and helping them address and solve them. Again, if you nurture and value them you will find they will pay you back.

Training

Another area of staff development often viewed as a burden or extra cost or a box to be ticked. Take that attitude, and your staff will never grow.

Make sure all training is relevant.

It should stem from the whole process of objective setting and appraisals. It should tie the two together. It will relate the objectives you have set for your staff (preferably objectives previously agreed with the member of staff) with the conversations you have with them during their appraisals. The training sets out what needs to happen for them to meet their objectives.

A good training programme is crucial for a successful media business.

 

The author of this piece, David Brewer, is a journalist and media strategy consultant who set up and runs this site, Media Helping Media. He delivers media strategy training and consultancy services worldwide and his business details are at Media Ideas International Ltd. He tweets @helpingmedia.