Business Matters

Training boom at business centres

The recession is not only affecting how people use their office space; it’s also having a dramatic effect on the nature and location of management training. The number of training organisations relocating to business centres has increased. Managers are increasingly using the training and meeting facilities at these centres on a pay-as-you-go basis – trends that have been reported by Avanta, one of London’s leading operators of business centres.

These growth figures are supported by a recent survey of 318 SMEs conducted by Ecademy, which found that 21% of respondents are now conducting training at business centres, whilst some 57% had used or had considered the professional business environment at these centres to be the ideal choice. While many businesses undertake training to help them reach strategic goals, an increasing number are also using the government-funded ‘Train to Gain’ schemes in order to help them improve their businesses performance.
Business centres have always attracted an extremely wide range of clients from diverse business sectors, but the rapid growth in training organisations taking serviced office space has resulted in the sector becoming the single largest client base for Avanta over the past year.

“Despite the economic downturn, companies are still investing in training,” comments Heidi Daniell of Accelerator Solutions, which is based at Avanta’s Lyric Square centre in Hammersmith. “They are also looking closely at cost and how, and where, the results will strategically impact their business.

“Many companies are now looking for quick hits and fairly immediate business success following training courses, and so there’s a fine balance between those that seek fast results and those that appreciate that management training is a long term investment, which may not produce meaningful results until maybe 12 months later. In fact, leadership-training results may take 12+ months to impact on a business.

 “We are also finding that off-site training is being requested by an increasing number of chief executives who appreciate that training actually works much better when conducted out of the office. There are no distractions and trainees can’t pop back to their desks to check their emails or make phone calls, so they stay more focused and therefore the training is more beneficial.

Avanta provides modern training, conference and meeting rooms at eighteen UK locations across the UK.

www.avanta.co.uk

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