2008
Jacquie Rayner,
HM Prison Service

2007
Christian Janssens,
NRG Benelux

Award Sponsored by

This Award is presented to an individual who has shown exceptional skills in managing an IT training department (within either a public or private sector organisation). Candidates (who may be nominated by management, peers, or department members) should demonstrate consistent high quality and innovation. In particular, the judges will be seeking clear differentiators from other entrants to the Award in terms of demonstrable impact on the performance of the organisation's employees, and a strong proposition in response to the challenge "why this year?"

Your submission

You are requested to structure your submission in a way that covers the sections below; each section will be assessed by the judges during the short-listing phase and you will receive the judges' assessments for each section. There is a maximum of 3,000 words per submission - you are warned that only the first 3,000 words of your submission will be read.

• Overall Description - a brief description of your role as manager of the training department, your goals and mission within the enterprise, and include summary metrics and key performance indicators.
  
• Personal Skills - within your submission, show how you have developed your personal skills in terms of: your commitment to training; your pro-active approach to challenges and ideas; being empathetic with trainers, learners and partners (both internal and external); having the ability to get things done within the organisation; being able to present and train yourself.
  
• People Skills - as a successful manager you need to be able to manage your people and ensure they can do their jobs. What have you done in terms of: developing your people; managing their expectations and skills; maintaining the quality of the training experience they deliver?
  
• Theoretical Framework and Understanding - what steps have you taken to ensure that you have: a good understanding of the different ways in which people learn; a sound knowledge of evaluation and its importance; a strong understanding of the different delivery methods (e.g. online, ILT, synchronous, asynchronous) and when it is appropriate to use each of them; and a sound basis for the selection, development and appropriate deployment of content?
  
• Grasp of Organisational Benefits - the successful manager needs to be aware of the aims of the organisation, to arrange the department's training to meet those aims, have the metrics in place to measure the impact, and ensure consistent processes to maintain the quality of the training. What have you done in terms of: linking training to delegate's needs (ideally to their Personal Development Plans); linking training to the business objectives of the client organisation (this may already be expressed in the Personal Development Plans); showing the effectiveness of training by having processes in place for the evaluation of training (ideally to at least level 3 of Kirkpatrick's scale); providing on-going support for training ; maintaining the quality of these procedures?
  
• Business Acumen - to demonstrate the way in which you have measured and communicated the success of your team, please demonstrate: your grasp of the objectives of the team; your understanding of how these aims fit in with the overall aims of the business; the way in which you manage the relationship with external partners; your approach to sourcing strategies and management of the operational issues of sourcing.
  
• Promotional Ability - what evidence can you provide that the department is promoted professionally and ethically? Please demonstrate the way in which you: market the value of training and skills to clients; market the value of services around training to clients; and sell the value of training upwards within the organisation.
  
• Innovation - to what extent have you been an enthusiastic innovator over the last twelve months and what new approaches have you proved?
  
• Business Contribution - what evidence do you have that your role as manager of the team has enabled the organisation as a whole to benefit from the programs and initiatives that have been implemented over the last twelve months?
  
• Achievement - what do you consider to be your core achievements within the last twelve months and why do you believe that this is the year that you should be the Training Manager of the Year?
  
• Additional Comments - (NB this section is optional and although it will not assessed as part of the feedback process, it will be considered as part of your submission). In this section please add any additional points that you feel the judges should consider in evaluating your submission.