Healthcare estates managers are proving to be highly receptive to a new programme of behavioural training that places participants ‘into bespoke situations that relate directly to the their day-to-day working environment’. Develop Training launched its MaTE (Managing a Technical Environment) behavioural training into the healthcare sector at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, and is rolling it out to estates and facilities managers via ‘taster’ days.
The sector has apparently proven highly enthusiastic and receptive to the training, with feedback suggesting this is ‘due to the radical changes currently being planned and implemented across the NHS’. Develop Training claims to have an excellent understanding of the day-to-day activities of estates personnel and the challenges they face.
The company added: “The course focuses on a combination of management skills and technical emphasis. Actors are used to create real-world conflict and other situations that regularly occur within the NHS treatment facility. By taking staff through these scenarios, and getting them to re-enact them, solutions are offered as to the best approach in dealing with them. Delegates learn how to change their behaviour, gaining confidence in their own decisions, and ultimately realising why good interpersonal management skills get better results.”
Laura Chandler, one of the creators of MaTE at Develop, said: “The majority of those people working in leadership roles in technical environments have worked their way up to the top by proving their technical abilities. This means they are generally extremely competent at the tasks associated with their role, but can often be less experienced at managing people, and handling the issues that come with it.”
The programme focuses on the value of communication, and the response to the training in the health sector is very promising. It is the development of ‘soft’ skills such as communication, empathy, and understanding, which are incontestable when providing good management practices.”
Delivering technical training and assessments across the UK, supported by five dedicated regional training centres, Develop claims to be one of the few providers delivering multi-utility training for both traditional and environmental technologies, and the only one offering ‘a distinctive blend of technical and behavioural training’.
MaTE is currently being delivered at Great Ormond Street Hospital and across the Berkshire Shared Services NHS Trust, and is seeing substantial interest from both other NHS Trusts and Ambulance Services.
Develop is holding a further two half-day ‘taster sessions’, in Derby on 25 April, and
in Linlithgow in Scotland in May (date tbc).
