The Effective Employee Representative – Role & Skills Training

valuable hints, tips, advice and guidance for to help Employee Reps perform better in role.

Our, effective employee representative – role & skills training course, helps workforce representatives understand their duties and enhance their skills; skills that are needed if they are to be highly effective in role.

Our training is comprehensive and fast paced. It helps, employee/staff/workforce representatives understand their role, better, helps embeds a positive and productive culture and demonstrates how employee reps can perform best in a range of typical situations. In short, it  provides a raft of hints, tips and guidance to help employee representatives carry out their duties more effectively.  

It is important to remember that the representation role often presents a different set of challenges, duties and responsibilities to the representatives’ “day job”. Consequently Representatives at all levels benefit from this training and its associated team building benefits. 

Effective employee representation plays a critical link between staff and management, helping both to understand the others’ views and perspectives.  This, especially in times of turbulence, growth or change, enables a far higher quality of planning and decision-making; helps keep staff informed, on-board and committed to the latest business development and efficiency strategies.  The role of is seldom an easy one. Individuals, the workforce as a whole and the business itself often have very different needs and priorities.  Employee’s representatives need to remain enthusiastic, show loyalty to all and always presenting the differing positions in a positive way.

Who is this training COURSE for?

This training is for new, potential or recently elected employee representatives from all business types and sectors. It also acts as a refresher for existing employee representatives or a way to re-energise a waining staff forum

CONTENT

1    The Role of the Employee Representative

  • Objectives of Employee Representation and associated Forums
  • Role and duties of Employee Representatives
    • Role description
    • The duties and activities representatives are not usually involved in

2     Context and Structures

  • The drivers behind the growth of Employee Representation
  • Structures for effective Employee Representation
  • The benefits on offer for both employers & employees
  • The role of ACAS
  • Consultation V Negotiation – which, when and why
  • When Consultation is required by Law – Collective Consultation, H&S, Contract changes, Redundancy, TUPE

3      Employee Representation Schemes and Structures

This session explores the workings of typical employee representation schemes in more detail including, where appropriate, the prevailing situation within the client’s organisation.

  • The four typical models

  • The general model or where appropriate client specific model
  • Operating protocols
  • Procedures – the “constitution” or “rule book”
    • Management responsibilities
    • Representation arrangements
    • Terms of Office and Eligibility
    • Time allocated to employee representatives – meetings and preparation
    • Topics for discussion and what is not usually up for discussion
    • Confidentiality

4      Attending and Participating in Meetings

  • Preparation
  • 16 Points to remember
  • 9 key planning steps
  • 10 Things to avoid
  • Meeting Structures and process – a step-by-step guide

 5   Personal Awareness and Development

Session 5 encourages participants to think more about the duties they will be involved in and the skills they will need for success in role.   This session acts as an introduction for session 6 “Skills for Success” it does not provide any hints, tips or advice on skills development but the provides a useful break point when should the course be delivered in two separate sessions

6   Skills for Success

This final session lasts about 3 hours, it explores the personal skills and behaviours that help employee representatives be more successful in role.  It includes a raft of hints tips and guidance on good practice, which are fully transferable to other situations

  • Excellent communication skills and listening skills
  • Confident in public speaking (speaking in front of groups of people including managers)
  • Ability to motivate and influence

In exploring the above the session includes a focus on:

  • Communication

    • active listening
    • observational skills
    • body language: posture, gestures, tone, voice, use of words

  • Questioning techniques

    • closed, open, supplementary, probing, hypothetical

  • Influencing others

    • Assertive – Aggressive – Passive – Passive/Aggressive Behaviour
    • Six techniques to deal with difficult situations

  • Negotiation

    with a reminder that much of the role is consultation not negotiation

    • Consultation vs Negotiation
    • The five key stages in any negotiation situation
    • planning your approach in meetings
    • knowing how and when to intervene

  • Reporting Back and Public Speaking

  • Planning and Organisational Skills

    • Being Proactive – able to seek out the views of all staff represented
    • Organised – able to ensure the views of most of the service area group are sought prior to and after meetings

Attendee FEEDBACK - COURSE EVALUATION COMMENTS FROM PREVIOUS ATTENDEES

Please Note: We always respect client privacy and confidentiality. We do not collate any identifiable delegate information on our course feedback forms. We only publish comments where express permission for marketing and promotional use, has been given.  The majority of delegates do not give this permission.

  • “Not a fan of all day training but this was brilliant”
  • “Very Informative”
  • “Very Engaging”
  • “Very effective will be able to take away and use”
  • “made me more confident”
  • “Much better than the original ACAS training”
  • “Excellent”
  • “First Class Training”
  • “A good amount of time spent on the various parts of the course”
  • “Well presented and very informative”
  • “Real examples, case studies case law” 
  • “Very Interesting cases to listen to – made it an engaging day”
  • “Excellent Day”
  • “Well rounded content”

MORE TRAINING COURSES FOR EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATIVES

Employee Representation Training - person writing a staff meeting notice
Employee Rep Training
Employee Representative - CPD Training Courses
Role and Skills Training
Role & Employment Law
Introduction to Role - 3 hour
Employment Legislation
Redundancy Training
TUPE Training
"Individual Consultation"
Consultation Good Practice
Practical Consultation - Changes to Contracts
Practical Consultation - Pensions
Pay & Benefit Discussions
Setting Up Employee Representation & Forums

Employee Representation Reference Guides

These guides are provided free of charge to help make your employee representation forum more effective. Our Employee Representation training courses explore and build on these to help you improve quality and effective even further.  

Employee Representation Models

When introducing Employee Representation, the first thing that needs to be considered is the scope and structure that best meets the needs of the business. This guide explores 4 typical structures.

Employee Representation Forum Constitutions

This reference document outlines typical rules & arrangements for effective Employee Representation Forums. It includes hints and tips on employee representation forum structures rules and boundaries

Advocacy Model – 10 tips for Difficult  Meetings

In non-unionised organisations employee representatives are often tasked with providing advocacy and mentoring support to staff. These meetings can be complex and demanding. This short article provides 10 useful hints and tips to make any meeting go smoothly

What Makes an Employee Representative Effective?

Employee Representatives are usually elected by the people they represent, the workforce. They are often elected on willingness to stand or popularity. What can the employer do to help them perform well in role and help develop business success.  This guides provides some ideas. 

Employee Representative Role Descriptor

An Employee Representative Role Descriptor Template. To maximise the effectiveness of any Employee Representative it is important that those standing, voting and appointing representatives understand the role and what it involves. The Role Descriptor play a critical part in achieving this.

FAQ Courses - Frequently Asked Questions about our training courses

Answers to common questions about our training courses can be found below.  Our website details our overall base course offer and prices.  Answers to  questions about our courses can be found below.  Answers to questions about Concrew Training as a company can be found on our “about-us” page on our “FAQ” page
 

Our training courses can be aligned to the specific needs of:

  • Human Resources, HR and L&D teams
  • Governors and Trustees
  • Directors and Senior Leaders
  • Managers and team leaders
  • Department Specialists
  • Internal trainers and subject experts
  • The general workforce, specific departments and individuals
  • Businesses and organisations across the UK

Whether you’re upskilling a small team, undergoing change, rolling out training organisation-wide, we can support you.

Our courses are highly participative and interactive. To ensure we involve everyone and cater for each attendees’ individual needs we limit attendance as follows. We can run multiple sessions where attendee numbers need to be higher.

  • Up to 15 people can attend online training courses.
  • Up to 20 people can attend face-to-face “training room” based training courses

Most of our training courses are attributed with 6 face-to-face learning hours. Including breaks, they usually run for about 7 hours.

We can condense most topics into 3 hour sessions.

We can combine and/or extend our courses to create bespoke multi-day programmes for you.

We deliver online courses via our clients’ video conferencing platform, throughout the UK.  Attendees can be based abroad but payment needs to be made by a UK based organisation.

We can deliver face-to-face training on your premises in England, Scotland and Wales.

Yes, we can deliver all our courses online in real time on your video conferencing platform, on a date and at a time that works for you.

We do not offer pre-recorded training.

Yes. We can deliver at your premises, in a training room, office, boardroom, classroom or at a venue organised by you

Yes, we can deliver at weekends, evenings and during night shifts.  This makes our training more accessible for Governors, Trustees and shift workers.

We publish detailed course overviews for all courses. These course overviews are based on the individual course learning plans.

Each course overview outlines indicative content as final content is always based on each individual customer’s own requirements.

Factual content is updated to reflect the very latest developments before each course runs.

Yes. We align final course content to each individual customers’ needs. This includes dovetailing content with your own policies and procedures, when required.

Why should you use Concrew Training?

  • Specialist HR, Employment Law & Compliance training provider
  • We reference to official Government bodies such as ACAS, ICO, EHRC
  • Content tailored to your policies and procedures
  • CPD certificates included
  • 12 months of post-course support
  • UK-wide delivery
  • Online and face-to-face options
  • Open and transparent pricing

Yes. We prefer to do this. Including your  policies and procedures in the training helps us contextualises the learning and improve quality

It makes it easier to demonstrate how, where and why good practice applies.

We do not charge extra for aligning content to your prevailing situation, internal policies and procedures

Yes, of course. We treat all the information you provide as strictly confidential. We only use the information you provide for the specific training assignment/s you book with us

We use a team of subject specialists to deliver the training. They all have in-depth subject knowledge and experience. They are able to answer most questions posed to them, on rare occasions complex or obscure questions may require post course answers. Our subject specialists are also highly experienced trainers, trainers who can make even dull and boring subjects come alive.

Our trainers bring years of industry experience and deliver engaging, interactive sessions that keep participants engaged, involved and learning. Our trainers are subject specialists and able to answer virtually any subject related question.

Yes, we can provide CPD certificates for all our courses. They detail the number of learning hours and headline course content.

Certification is included in all half-day and one-day courses, it is an optional extra for 60/90 minute lectures.

Our customers and clients say things like:

We recommend our training is booked 2 to 3 months in advance. We only reserve dates against form bookings. Availability decreases with time.

During quieter periods we may have a very limited amount of short term, 2-week or less, lead time availability.

You are required to:

  • Provide the video conferencing platform (Teams/Zoom etc) or training room
  • Provide all the equipment, including a laptop for the trainer, when the training is delivered face-to-face on your premises or similar
  • Issue invites to all parties
  • To print/distribute materials and CPD certificates from PDF files we supply*

*Most materials can be distributed electronically

  • We are a specialist HR, Employment Law & Compliance training provider
  • We reference to official Government bodies such as ACAS, ICO, EHRC
  • Content can be tailored to your prevailing needs, inhouse policies and procedures
  • CPD certificates are included
  • 12 months of post-course support is provided
  • We offer UK-wide delivery
  • we have online and face-to-face options available
  • Our pricing is open and transparent 

Our training is high quality and budget friendly. We charge the same price for all topics.

Our prices include reasonable alignment to your specific needs, your inhouse polices and procedures.

Our prices vary according to training location, the number of attendees, and payment terms. Our prices page gives full information.

Please complete our quote form.  This form captures the key information we need to provide a quote and answer any related questions you may have. 

Our prices page and Company FAQ Page may also be of help