T is for… Training Record

T is for Training Record

Improving your knowledge and expertise and demonstrating this is a cruicial part of the appraisal process. Your training record should help you evidence this. Depending on your role you may have a specific form of training programme to follow and therefore a specific training record to keep.

However, a lot of employers want to encourage their employees to also have a say in their training programme and to self evaluate (which is why questions about knowledge and training often come up at appraisal time).

You will want to evaluate both your technical and soft skills and improving on both of these. You should record both things that are “compulsory” and those that you have taken the initiative to do.For example I do a lot of training courses and seminars with the networking organisations that I am a part of and I make sure to include these in my training record. As well as keeping a record of your ongoing training you should also write a training plan for the upcoming year.

Your training record should include:

• compulsory internal training that I have attended;
• optional internal training that I have attended (soft skills);
• optional internal training that I have attended (technical);
• IT training (internal);
• external training that I have attended (provided);
• external training that I have attended (requested);
• external training that I have attended (through memberships/organisations);
• external training (soft skills);
• external training (IT skills).

For each entry make a note of the information that you need for your appraisal (and generally for yourself).

For example you might include:

• Date / Location
• Title / Topic
• Speakers / Organisers
• Learning Points
• Follow up / Next Steps

As I keep an electronic record I often also add in links to my training record as well to keep a note of the course organiser, notes / slides from the training etc.