Duncans blog -Training day

Since we've managed to get over the launch of www.finditinsandwell.co.uk, we've found that things have changed quite a bit around the office. The work load is still there of course with 11 new clients coming in this week alone but somehow we feel that thngs aren't quite as pressured now. One of the reasons for this is the fact that although we have these new clients, we are dedicating time to each member of staff now for pure training purposes, whether it's surfing the net for inspiration, tricks and tips, attending a more structured course or putting on our own in house training sessions, we've decided that, save for an imminent deadline, training is now top priority.

I kicked off the in house sessions with a training session all about.... how to give training sessions, using the structures that I learnt from my career in the Royal Navy I taught everyonen the principles and structures they should be applying to their in house lessons and now we can see the results coming through the ranks with the more senior designers, programmers and client side staff able to pass on their knowledge to everyone else. The result hasn't beeen a drop in production from the people attending the sessions but a massive increase in productivity and motivation. The teachers feel valued as their skills are recognised and shared and the students can now do things better and faster.

It is too easy to put training onto the bottom of the list of priorities when it comes to workload but by giving everyone a seperate training plan and work schedule, we have overcome this trap tha we fell into with our last large design project. Now instead of having and relying on just one person to perform a task, we can rely on several, it just makes good sense all round really. As for my own personal training. I like to take an hour out of each day to look at the different seo blogs and sites to see what's new. Internet world is on in London in May which hopefully I can find time to attend the whole show or if not then definately one day, in fact, I want everyone in the office to spend at least a day there as you can't beat talking to other people in the industry to give yourself a lift, it's definately not the most sociable activity, sitting behind a computer all day and it will be good to see who else is out there and share some ideas. Also the Miami search engine strategies conference 2007 is looming on the horizon so I'm in the process of sorting out if and who gets to go there (always a lot of competition) which is a good thing really as it shows how keen the staff at www.iceblue.co.uk are to learn as much as possible about search engine optimisation and search engine marketing (or then again they could just be wanting to go to Miami (I know I'll be taking my surfboard if I let myself go!)