One of the main benefits of booking in-house (on-site) training, as against sending your people off to a training centre to attend a pubic course, is that your training can be customised to match the specific needs of your organisation. When you book in-house training courses, be sure to make this clear to the training company and give them a full briefing on your requirements. Produce a list of essential topics that need to be covered after discussing the matter with the staff members who will be attending the course, their manager or someone in your company who already has the skills the trainees will be acquiring.

Send examples of your work to the training company, before the training, so that they have a good idea of the kind of documents your guys will need to create or edit (Make sure that you remove any sensitive or confidential information!).

A good software training session will give users plenty of chances to practice the skills they are being taught. Ask the training company to incorporate your own documents into these practical exercises given to trainees on the course. For example, if your people are being shown how to produce brochures, have the trainer ask them to produce pages from some of your own brochures during the course to check that they are mastering all the key techniques.

You will need to find a suitable room where you can realistically conduct a training session and where the trainees can concentrate on learning without being interrupted or distracted. If your organisation does not have a dedicated training room then a meeting room can be modified for the purpose. Delegates should be able to see the trainer from their seat without having to perform any contortions. Each delegate should also have the use of their own workstation or laptop for the entire course and enough space to use a keyboard and mouse.

The appropriate version of the software should be loaded on each person’s machine and, ideally, everyone should be using the same version of the software. For example, running a course on Microsoft Word where some delegates have Word 2003 and others 2007 would be a nightmare, since the two versions have such major differences.)

A workstation or laptop fixed to a screen projector will enable the trainer to demonstrate the software efficiently. This is especially useful with a large group. If your company does not have one, they can be hired for around 25 per day. The training room should also have a whiteboard and pens.

For your training to be effective, all staff must be available for the entire duration of the course and must not be interrupted by other members of staff. Ideally, they should be treated as absent from the office until their training ends. Equally importantly, they should be motivated to do the training and be shown how it will benefit them and enable them to work more effectively.