DM introduced the next point on the agenda and explained he wanted feedback on what went well and what can be improved upon from the training week, he also mentioned that CC will be involved with future training although she was not for their training week.
CD said she had wanted to hold a committee meeting straight after the week but had to wait. She said the plant thing didn’t help at all and suggested not running that event next time as well as drawing people inside and outside. CD said more time training to set up live would have been of more benefit; she also suggested that having a couple of days during the week to do their own thing would also have been good – i.e. for them it would have been a couple of days setting up live as a departments and having joint socials with the other departments in the evenings.
Points to consider: Individual committee training days.
JB agreed with the ideas CD suggested, also highlighting that he would have preferred more time to do training within departments rather than all training across departments. JB said he liked that the week was broken down into sections but said that the finance section was not relevant to everyone and that there were probably other sections this was true for. JB said that publicity training might have been better as that is relevant to all departments, he suggested more tailoring during the week for individual departments as at times the week felt like the training was too generic.
Point to consider: More tailoring of training to the individual departments.
LE said she didn’t feel the PA fit in at the training week in terms of what they do; she said it felt like a lot of the training was dedicated to Presidents of societies where PA is separate from that. LE said she would like for presidents and heads of the committees to be trained but that the training week needs to be split into days – for example a bonding session for the CIZ committee members on one of the days without having the individual committees within that being involved as well. LE agreed there needed to be more tailoring of training, she also suggested having separate sessions i.e. President Sessions, Treasurer Sessions etc.
Point to consider: Consider separate training sessions for Presidents, Treasurers etc.
NT said shorter would have been better and suggested giving a day for the committee training meeting. He asked why it was just them and suggested including other committees in the training week. DM said they have to draw a line because of time and costs, LE suggested inviting all the presidents of committees rather than all committee members.
Point to consider: Shorter training times.
SE suggested moving more towards a conference structure with specific training on how to do various things; he suggested having a day dedicated to seminars and making more of an event of the evening socials as they felt too side-lined this year. LM said her committee said they liked the week as a whole but didn’t find it very helpful. JB suggested having the first day as an individual committee bonding and training day and work up to having broader training later in the week so that by the end of the week everyone is brought together for joint training. JB also said more focus is needed on individual groups before building up to collaborations.
Points to consider: More emphasis on joint evening socials, and implement individual committee training days.
NT mentioned that timings need to be considered, explaining that during Freshers a solid week of 9-5 days would be a bit much. CG said different groups would benefit from different forms of training with some groups not being interested at all and others sending just their President and Treasurer. CG suggested adding some compulsory training to the week so that it gets it out of the way before term starts and introduces them to the idea of having to think about areas such as Health and Safety.
Points to consider: Change the timings and add some compulsory training events.
CG also mentioned timings, suggesting that on days following a social night out the training could be pushed back so there was a later start time the following day but also a later finish to compensate. LE said a conference style training where some seminars are compulsory and others are optional would be a better format. SE said it needs to be stressed that the training won’t be optional and that if people are signed up for it they should be there for all of it, or as much of it as possible, as there is a reason for holding the training week.
Points to consider: Start times after social night outs, possible conference style training. Emphasise training is not optional if you are signed up to attend.