How do I deal with managers forgetting to include me on in-house training sessions?

Question

I work for an IT company and have worked in this company for about two years. I am the only one on my team in my current office as my direct reporting manager is in another office in another location. My work is very independent and I don't interact much with the other teams in this office unit. I have changed managers a few times over the 2 plus years due to organization change and I am very happy with my current manager.

Unfortunately I kept getting missed out from being invited to most in-house training regardless of whether or not I need to attend them or not. Some of these training/sharing sessions are related to my work but most of the organizers 'forgot' to add me to the participant list / mailing list. Lately, there are lots of new technology we are experimenting with and we are in the midst of changing our internal processes so it would be great if I can attend these training or sharing sessions.

I have raised this concern to my manager a few times over the course of a few months and he has informed some of the organizers to include me. However, nothing has changed much and I am still not getting invites to such training especially in the office where I currently am now. Even if they did invite me to join, they invited me to the wrong training session and I found out a few days later that a local session has been conducted and I couldn't join the session they invited me to because it will be conducted in another location.

To be honest, I have given up on the idea of attending any in-house training because I cannot keep asking the other teams each time they have a meeting if it's a training/sharing session that would benefit me or just a regular team meeting. The only problem is my manager informed me that I have to attend at least 12 training / sharing / online courses per year as part of my performance appraisal.

So, what would the best course of action now? Should I just forget about the training, focus on my work and work on other training options like online training/courses? I am not sure what else I can do besides constantly checking with other colleagues and joining the training uninvited.

Answer 1

Firstly, how are you hearing about these sessions? Are you getting forewarned or is it after the fact?

If you find out before a session

Training benefits both the company and you. With this in mind there's no harm in openly approaching the organizer with a casual e-mail along the lines of:

Hey x,

I heard about the training session coming up on subject. I think this would be relevant to my role because of reasons. Would you be ok if I attended?

Regards,

y

If you find out about a session after the fact

If you've missed out but still heard about the session I would e-mail the organizer:

Hey x,

I heard about the training last week on subject. This really interests me, do you have any notes or details from the session that you could forward me?

Also, if there are any future sessions would it be possible that I could receive an invitation?

Regards,

y

Building relationships by networking!

Increasing your communication regarding sessions is going to help remind people that you're around, and that you're interested in learning new things.

I think right now you're not so much being kept out of the loop as you are being overlooked. Network as much as you can to help build relationships with these people so when they are building their lists they think of you.

Improving the state of communication

You said:

To be honest, I have given up on the idea of attending any in-house training because I cannot keep asking the other teams each time they have a meeting if it's a training/sharing session that would benefit me or just a regular team meeting. The only problem is my manager informed me that I have to attend at least 12 training / sharing / online courses per year as part of my performance appraisal.

It's concerning that there's a mandatory training system in place but no central way to check for upcoming sessions. I think it would be worthwhile proposing to your manager that the company look into establishing a central events or training calendar. If you have an Intranet (or SharePoint) team in place this would be worth raising with them.

Since these don't appear to be in place and you're doing everything you can to find out about these sessions make sure that each time you send one of the e-mails above you file a copy of it. When you are preparing your talking points for your review bring this together to show that you've actively done as much as possible to attend these in-person sessions. Highlight to them that problem isn't your desire to attend in person sessions but rather a lack of communication that you need your manager to tackle at his level. Also be sure to make up for the shortfall with Online sessions so you meet your targets. Explain what you got out of those but that you believe you would have got more out of internal session because of x or y reasons.