How Training Your Employees in Prince2 Will Benefit Your Company

Good employees are the backbone of any business. If your business were a train, your employees would be the engine consistently driving it forward, and similarly to an engine, the more you invest in your employees, the greater the return. Analogies aside, investing in your employees both fiscally and holistically is a crucial practice for any business worth its salt, and developing your employee's skill sets through targeted training programmes is one of the most effective ways not only directly to improve an employee's capabilities, but to ensure loyalty, inspire a more excellent work ethic, and tangentially, increase productivity and efficiency, all of which can only have positive impacts on the performance of your business, no matter the size. 

Training programmes in larger enterprises are regularly undertaken as part of standard practice, and as such, a specific budget is outlined for such expenditures; for smaller businesses, the initial cost of outsourcing an employee training programme may seem too great. However, despite the bump of a requisite initial investment, surveys have shown that not only do employees think that training programmes have a direct and positive impact on their job role, but it has been proven across multiple projects that training your employees in specific methodologies and programmes outside of their work experience, has a direct and demonstrable impact on profit. This means your initial investment will be returned, plus interest. 

In light of the favourable evidence proving the case for training programmes, choosing the most beneficial programme for your employees is the most challenging decision. Regardless of your industry, training your employees in the correct tools for project management will ensure that they are better equipped to handle complex problem-solving communicative issues and are overall more successful in their roles.  

Out of all the project management methodologies, Prince2 is the most universally applicable. As a global industry standard in project management, Prince2 is recognised worldwide. It offers your employees a more rounded education in the skills they subconsciously may already possess and utilise in their daily responsibilities. 

The Benefits of Training in Prince2 

Undertaking a Prince2 training programme can improve your employees' productivity, efficiency, and adherence to your company's highest quality standards. It can also enhance their ability to handle a greater and more complex variety of work. Moreover, the flexibility of the Prince2 training method inherently teaches adaptivity, meaning learning how to apply the Prince2 skills and techniques to any task or company. 

Improves Their Leadership Skills 

More than a managerial methodology, Prince2 encompasses all the facets of teaching students to become good leaders. Leadership isn’t just about directing the play but also getting involved in the action, supporting the team in any way possible to ensure the job is completed to the highest standard. Essentially, being a good leader means investing your time, effort, and energy into making something work, no matter the stakes. 

Prince2 teaches leadership skills through multiple channels, primarily through understanding the role scope plays in a project. By its dictionary definition, scope equates to perception, and perception is precisely what is needed to get the best work from a project team and deliver the best results. Understanding the skills of each project team member and adapting the workload to best benefit from each of their respective skill sets enables a team to work more coherently and more successfully. Similarly, perception allows a good project manager to pinpoint weaknesses and adapt their workload to cover them, supporting the team in all capacities. 

Whether your employee is or isn’t currently in a leadership role, outside of priming them for future promotion, learning the qualities of a good leader applies to working within any company. Working empathetically, intuitively and with initiative is invaluable inside and outside project management. It enables employees to facilitate the best work for themselves and their colleagues and encourages employees to work generously - becoming mindful of the collective output of the team rather than only their own. 

Improves Their Communication Skills 

As Prince2 is, first and foremost, directed towards those in the project management profession, one of the critical skills taught is communicating efficiently, as communication is at the heart of excellent project management. Leading a team of disparate members with varied roles whilst simultaneously ensuring internal and external stakeholders of the project's progression means that learning to interact with and accurately inform a number of different people daily is essential. 

Good communication is imperative in all businesses, whether dealing with colleagues or clients. The adaptive nature of the communicative practices Prince2 teaches builds core competencies, enabling employees to be comfortable directing a meeting or working as a team member. 

Instructing the participants in essential tools, techniques, and various communication procedures and methods of reporting, in line with the industry-wide standard set by Prince2, will help your employee become aware of the necessity of consistent communication and understand the importance of adapting the modes and methods of communication to each particular task or project. 

Improves Their Time Management Skills 

A core part of the Prince2 method is learning how to structure any project or task into clearly defined steps to make it logical and organised. By carefully planning a project’s beginning, middle and end, or planning the project before its outset, maintaining organisation and control, tidying up loose ends, and ultimately, understanding how to prioritise, a Prince2 trained employee will minimise the risk of missing critical deadlines and turning in unsatisfactory work. 

Similarly, the Prince2 training programme heavily emphasises using foresight to analyse and assess any potential risk and to implement strategies to mitigate and minimise the potential impact of future risk. No one can predict the future; inevitably, some paradigms are unforeseen and unprepared; however, by developing multiple safeguards, employees can reduce the time to deal with any fallout by utilising or combining several potential safety nets. 

Prince2 teaches vigilance in adhering to strict timeframes. Regardless of your employee’s role, the ability to be diligent and punctual regarding task deadlines and to think laterally and progressively about how decisions in the short term affect long-term goals is a significant asset. Time, after all, is always money. 

Improves Their Efficiency 

Efficiency is vital for an employee and, consequently, for a company to compete for continued success in a growing marketplace. It is no wonder that following the globally developed strategies taught by Prince2 increases employee efficiency tenfold. 

By focusing on the micro machinations of what makes your business tick and investing in training your employees to become better leaders, communicators, and analysts, the basic tenets of a highly efficient worker, the larger, macro workings of your business will similarly increase in both productivity and efficiency.