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Supporting you and your staff’s learning and development

Over the past few months, we have been doing a lot of reflecting on whether AdviceUK’s current training and qualification offer is still fit for purpose? Also what else members want AdviceUK ideally to provide in terms of learning and development support.

It has been a pleasure to work with members from diverse areas of advice and different parts of England, Scotland and Wales as well as some of our trainers, and colleagues from AdviceNI.

They were all part of a design group that helped us gain a deeper understanding of the challenges you face in accessing training – lack of funds, time and accessibility of course – as well as the needs you and your teams have that are not being met.

There was a strong sense that face to face training is valued but online has its place too. Also the value learners place on sharing experiences and ideas with each other and how they would like this to extend beyond the end of their actual course.

We have taken all that feedback and agreed with the design group that AdviceUK should focus on a wide range of improvements and different approaches over the next 1 to 3 years including:

• Management and leadership training
• Online peer support networks for advisers at different stages of their careers
• Growing face to face learning events and networking opportunities where none currently exist
• E-learning that supports bite-sized learning including refresher training
• Improving the content of Learning to Advise (our main training programme) and utilising e-learning to provide a blended learning approach to its delivery
• Training and support around building collaborative partnerships and funding bids
• Developing a partnership with a learning provider to support delivery of our qualifications

It is of course a big to do list so unsurprisingly we have prioritised what we will do first. We are being deliberate about pacing and capacity, so we can deliver meaningful improvements rather than rushed solutions.
Over the coming months we will be looking to develop:

• A new management essentials programme (working title “Step into Management”) to support frontline advisors keen to progress into a supervisory or management role. There was a strong message from design group members who felt there was little opportunity to support staff progression in this area and that it would help them with staff retention
• An improved e-learning system that can provide more dynamic e-learning content and will further improve our ever-popular Learning to Advise (LtA) training programme. Alongside this bite-sized training so advisors can develop their personal learning be that refresher training or new areas they want to develop.
• Peer support online networks or communities for advisors at different stages of their career. We know from advisors attending LtA training as well as members on the design group who were had recently moved into management that they missed the opportunity to share experiences and ideas with others at similar stages of their advice career. So we are going to start small by trialling a couple of communities; most likely for new advisors and for people moving into or already in supervisory or management roles.
• Qualifications partner – to support to both improve support to individuals undertaking a qualification with us and, we hope, to reach more individuals interested in undertaking these qualifications.

All of this contributes to AdviceUK’s efforts to support our members to provide quality advice and support their staff to grow their knowledge and skills as well as utilising training opportunities to help them progress their career in advice and hopefully help you retain staff a little longer.

What’s changing while we do this?
To make space for this work, there are some areas where we are pausing or scaling back activity:

• In‑house training
  We will be pausing most bespoke in‑house training requests, apart from more straightforward delivery of existing courses. Where possible, we’ll signpost members to other providers. We’re still happy to hear from you particularly if you can share some initial details about what you’re looking for.
• Open courses and Learning to Advise
  From early 2027, Learning to Advise will run less frequently, and we’ll be offering a smaller number of open courses overall, while we redesign our wider offer.. Some courses, such as Train the Trainer and Effective Supervision, will continue.
• Qualifications
  We are not currently enrolling new qualification learners unless the programme is grant‑ Anyone already registered will be supported to complete their qualification within agreed timeframes. Alongside this, we are exploring future options for qualifications delivery through external partners.

If you would like to get involved in helping us develop the first stage of this improvement programme, please do get in touch. There are lots of ways to be involved. You may…

• Have time to be on one of the working groups helping to develop these new approaches.
• Just want to help us test things out as we develop these approaches
• Only want to share your experiences – good and bad – of training content or formats that you have used or networks you are on.

All types of support are welcome so please get in touch using our contact form (Select “Learning and Skills” as your area of interest), or email if you already have our email, and we can talk through how you might want to be involved.