Good Samaritans
Samaritans report surge in listening skills training as companies tap into charities' expertise.
The change of mood in UK business is bringing a new area of training expertise into the limelight (reports Training Zone). As organisations face the dual challenge of beating the recession while embracing an ethical agenda, they are hunting for new ways of doing business and of refreshing their employees’ skills set at the same time. And so a new style of training provider is making its mark.
Commercial companies are increasingly tapping into the expertise of charitable organisations in order to make the most of their specialist knowledge or to refresh their development offering. For example, Public Concern at Work - which aims to safeguard the public interest by empowering individuals to speak up about wrongdoing in the workplace - is finding that it is called upon to advise organisations on creating greater transparency. Disability charity Leonard Cheshire has advised on, and tested access arrangements for transport companies, while children’s charity Hands Around the World has helped financial services companies send their staff to build classrooms in deprived parts of the globe.
The charity making the biggest inroads into commercial training though is Samaritans, which has seen its training business increase by more than a third in the past year. The charity - which has been offering confidential, emotional support to anyone who phones or writes to them, for the past 56 years - has a commercial training arm. This has seen a 36 per cent increase in the number of courses it has delivered to companies, charities, and public sector organisations in 2008/09 compared to 2007/2008.
Samaritans offers advice in all aspects of workplace relationships, such as effective communication through listening and questioning skills and in tackling stress (which was the subject of a CD-ROM package distributed by Video Arts).
Samaritans: Gold standard in listening skills training
“Samaritans is best known for its listening skills in difficult circumstances,” says Steve Tollerton, workplace training manager. “And over the past year a lot more organisations have been saying that they need our expertise. This is partly because of referred business and also because of the effects of the recession which is seeing more organisations receiving difficult contacts.”
Samaritans' courses have a common model of improving listening skills but are designed around the organisation’s needs. Most frequently these are to give employees the techniques to de-escalate emotional situations and end contact with the caller in a sensitive manner, whilst helping the caller to feel valued. This is the approach at Legal & General, where training manager Leanne Amicucci- Brown explains that the insurer has used Samaritans to help with sensitive phone calls, used the Handling Difficult Contacts training course.
