Success as a training coordinator hinges on strong negotiation skills, writes Australian Earth Training’s Scott Lidster.
Back in January, I travelled to Tanzania to help deliver a fleet of 777E trucks, a 16 grader and a D10T2 dozer. While I was there, I met Paul Lusato, the training coordinator at the gold mine where the new machines were being delivered.
Paul’s not the first training coordinator I have interacted with as a part of what I do, but after spending two weeks with him and his training department, I thought it would be good for people to gain a greater understanding of what goes on behind the scenes as a training coordinator.
training coordinator.
Paul’s day usually kicks off around 5:30am, when he gets to his office to start planning the day’s activities. His priority is aligning the site trainers with their respective training events.
Next on the list is attending the morning production meeting – not to missed! Depending on how production is performing, a lot of training events can be spun out of a production meeting. And from a training coordinator’s perspective, it is extremely helpful while everyone’s in the room to ask department heads additional questions to help guarantee that the planned training will be effective.
Following the production meeting, Paul circles back with his trainers to make sure everyone is clear on delivering their daily activities – whether that’s in the classroom, in one of the simulators, or conducting practical training of various pieces of equipment.
Throughout the day, Paul finds himself in meetings with different departments and other site sections, discussing how his team can assist their training requirements, sitting in on ICAM (accident investigations), or helping develop risk assessments and JSAs (job safety analyses).
Planning for an intake of future production operators is the latest project Paul has been working on. It takes time and a lot of attention to detail to create a training plan to help turn inexperienced candidates into safe, competent operators.
Then, there are the numerous daily “walk-ins” who front up to the office asking if they can get a light vehicle licence or an overhead crane authorisation – right now! No, no you can’t get one now, mate…
If there’s one quality that you need to have to succeed as a training coordinator, it’s solid negotiating skills. Every day you’ll be negotiating something, whether it’s for candidates, access to a machine, better training aids or more resources.
“Each and every day is different because of the meetings you need to attend, and everyone wants answers,” Paul says.
“We do our work as a team to make sure all our customers are happy.”
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