Structured Training for Trainee Paraplanner

mckayj

We have promoted one of our administrators to trainee paraplanner but we have no structured training program in place as we’re a small firm at the moment. The firm has ambitions to grow so we may look to progress other staff in time and starting a training programme for paraplanners is something we want to develop.

I’m looking for guidance on the best way to structure training. Our trainee is working on the job and we are varying the work at the moment, they are studying towards level 4 also and we would hope technical knowledge will develop from both on the job training and exams. There’s always lots of help on hand from myself as manager and other experienced colleagues.

I would love guidance or to hear experience of what works well or not so well when developing and training new paraplanners.

Thanks in advance 🙂

richardgough

Have a full and detailed job description so you know what the role entails in your firm.
Work out which of those activities need to be learned sooner rather than later.
Identify which tasks your employee can already do, which they can do in part and which they have no experience of at all.
This, at least, gives you a starting point for what needs to be taught and in what order you want to learn them.
Getting a new role fully embedded takes time - longer than you think in most cases.
You cannot 'teach' all the time, so you need to balance the work / teach time for both employees and those doing the teaching/training.
Given you are just starting down this road write everything down and then adapt it when you know what works well and what didn't work so well in the training delivery in real life.

Caro

Everything that Richard said!

You seem to have made a great start and know what you need, it's simply a case of formalising it, ensuring it's all measurable, and tracking progress against benchmarks you'd like achieved.

I've set up lots of training programmes for trainee paraplanners and apprentice paraplanners, trained them and reviewed the programmes too! Happy to have a chat if it'd help

mckayj

Thank you both for your response, very helpful indeed. @Caro , if you have time spare to chat through and give me some guidance on setting this up I would really appreciate that. Thank you

Caro

Yes, of course, no problem, I'll send you a message with my calendly on

amelia1983

Hi, my firm are in a similar position and are about to promote one of our administrators to the trainee paraplanning role and I am looking to put in place a structured training plan. I wondered if you would be willing to share your ideas? She has not yet taken any exams, so some ideas on the best order to tackle these would be helpful.
Thanks in advance.