Read on to discover more about business strategy at HMRC, and how learning is transferred in the workplace.

HR Zone Q6: How important is it that businesses train their staff?
Martin: It is very important – the business is changing all the time and what we expect of managers is constantly increasing and being upgraded. We must provide the training products needed to upskill, the two go hand in hand.

It is also important to refresh the understanding of employees. They may have forgotten or grown bored of details. You can’t simply teach and expect it to apply for the next ten years – it won’t happen.

Business knowledge is very important – we provide lots of “just in time” training in response to changing taxes, legislation and other new demands. For example, the introduction of new tax credits required staff training; and bringing two departments together to form HMRC demanded new products.

HR Zone Q7: Why should delegates attend your talk Linking Training to Business Needs at the forthcoming CIPD, HRD conference?
Martin: It will be an opportunity to hear a very large organisation’s response to massive change in a short time period, and how we’ve supported this.

HR Zone Q8: What are the key messages you hope to get across?
Martin: The importance of putting business strategy first, and providing learning support.

HR Zone Q9: What is the transfer of learning in the workplace?
Martin: Learning is the responsibility of managers, not of the central learning function. It is managers acting as coaches, people being given the opportunity to practice the skills they’ve learned. E-learning is great to achieve this as you can return to it whenever you like.

Linda Martin will be talking to delegates at the CIPD’s HRD conference on Thursday, 6 April at 13.45 together with Margaret Gildea, Director of Human Resources – Operations and UK Shared Services, Rolls Royce on linking training to business needs.