Health and social care managers are responsible for planning and delivering appropriate training to their staff. This responsibility extends to understanding the learning and development needs of individual employees, their whole workforce and the services they provide.

Detailed workforce planning takes time but has long-term benefits, including effective use of resources, improved quality care and better outcomes for service users. Outstanding health and social care providers succeed because they invest in their staff through learning and development programmes. Effective training and development empowers their staff to deliver excellent care services and drive organisational improvement.

Statutory and mandatory training helps health and social care organisations to refresh their knowledge of various legislation and statutory guidance, national guidelines and professional standards.

The core mandatory and statutory training modules are often treated as a tick-box exercise to reconfirm or repeat prior learning. However, health and social care managers should consider the following reasons for refresher updates:

• Updating staff knowledge when new legislation or best practice recommendations are introduced
• Managing new risks to job roles, introducing new equipment or changes in the work environment
• Meeting legislative and regulatory requirements to deliver training at specific intervals
• Updating employee competencies based on risk mitigation efforts and demonstrating specific skills needed for their job roles.

There is specific guidance for health and social care professionals from professional bodies, such as the General Medical Council (GMC), Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the General Dental Council (GDC). These organisations set out the minimum standards that registrants must meet in their codes of conduct.

All adult social care workers not registered with professionals are expected to meet the standards set out in the Care Certificate and Skills for Care’s code of conduct. The code outlines the expected attitudes and behaviours of all staff when they engage with service users and within their workplaces.

Following the loosening of guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic, health and social care providers have adopted various learning and development methods. Many of these opportunities were developed out of necessity but have proven to be cost-effective while also delivering excellent results. The following methods are available to service providers:

• On-the-job learning, including action learning and apprenticeships
• Multi-reality solutions
• Social learning, including conferences, flipped learning, webinars and informal development
• Off-the-job learning, including e-learning, learning apps, massive open online courses (MOOCs) and qualifications.

Choosing a learning provider can be a daunting task for many health and social care providers. The lack of meaningful guidance makes the important decision much more difficult to make.

Good learning providers have the following characteristics:

• Ability to monitor, review and evaluate learning
• Offer learning that meets staff needs in a safe and flexible manner
• Have suitably qualified and experienced trainers and assessors
• Provide support that helps managers to make informed decisions about the most appropriate learning and development methods
• Provide ongoing support and assessment for learners.

It is essential for health and social care organisations to evaluate the effectiveness of learning and development programmes after they have been delivered. Evaluations should ideally be done on an individual basis during supervision.

Evaluations help to assess the effectiveness of each piece of learning and help to guide future planning cycles.