Newsquest Training

The Newsquest newspaper group moved into online publication of their papers, combining this with the sale of online advertisments and mini-sites to their advertisers.

This gave a training requirement across the company which needed to deliver many different levels of knowledge, from basic understanding to advanced web design.

Building a training plan

Our first task was to consult with senior management and agree the objectives for training, identify the different groups within the company and decide on time scales. All the training needed to be based around the products that Newsquest planned to supply, and were aimed at the market sector targetted by Newsquest.

We then designed a series of interlinked courses and presentations, and worked closely with Newsquest HR and their own internal Training Manager to co-ordinate all the training events to prevent too many people being out of their offices at the same time, whilst still keeping the courses economic and properly balanced. We provided Training Needs Analysis forms to assist in this process and keep the existing skill level of the groups roughly similar.

The Training

The plan included nine different courses, which between them supplied all the knowledge required by the Training Plan objectives whilst still being within the budget for the project. The courses were:

• Essential Concepts
• Designing effective websites
• Selling a Website
• Copy extraction
• Building a Website
• Site Promotion
• HTML for Webmasters
• Introduction To Dreamweaver
• The Newsquest Corporate Style Sheet

Delivery

Over the year we delivered the courses at various Newsquest locations including Gloucester, Watford, High Wycombe, London, Preston and Bolton. We trained adminstration staff, sales teams, managers and directors as well as all the Newsquest journalists.

There were crucial differences between the teams of Newsquest journalists and web authors, some used MACs whilst others were on PCs, and there were several different software packages in use including Dreamweaver, NotePad Pro and Newsquest's own in-house software. Our courses were designed to be adapatable and able to cope with these differences.

Feedback and Results

During the planning of this project we identified that the prime objective of Newsquest was to communicate and engender enthusiasm and remove uncertainty and apprehension from their workforce. This objective was achieved and there was a visible increase in the confidence and performance of the Newsquest personnel.

There was a formal system of feedback in place for all the training with clearly measurable scores which were monitored for trends and weaknesses by both Newsquest and Skill Zone. However the most important feedback was the tangible improvement in the staff's approach to the Internet, which became an opportunity when it had been perceived as a threat. All Newsquest newspapers are now available online.