Bournemouth Chamber of Trade & Commerce has announced a new training scheme with funding for up to 40 businesses across Bournemouth.

The scheme funded through the Bournemouth Borough Council Recession Fund will provide small businesses with help to carry out a training needs analysis and provide a menu of skills training to deliver some of their training needs.

Research shows that during a recession 44% of employers reduce the amount of money that they spend on training. In reality the economic downturn has increased the need to have high quality staff training, morale is likely to be higher amongst well trained staff and profit could improve if staff were trained to be more efficient and capable.

Vice President of the Chamber, Steve Taylor, said “This is an exciting development for the Bournemouth Chamber as we focus our efforts in 2010 on providing direct support to Bournemouth businesses.

With our partners Retail Skillshop Dorset and Business Link we are working to fill the skills gap for smaller businesses in areas such as customer service and IT skills. This is the first of many initiatives we will be launching during 2010 as part of our recession busting programme.

Whilst reports say that the country is creeping out of recession it is smaller businesses which are seeing the effects continuing and our aim is to make them stronger as the recovery happens.”

Available from the beginning of June to all businesses with up to ten members of staff, applications will be on a first come first served basis. The scheme also provides the flexibility to allow individual businesses to apply or where a common training need exists, a group of businesses can apply together for group training.

Mandy Payne, Coordinator Retail Skillshop Dorset said” For the first time a package of training and support will be offered that really suits the independent retailer and other small businesses. Most business owners are not able to leave their place of work to train on areas that would make their life easier and more profitable. Working with Bournemouth & Poole College we will bring trained specialists to the workplace at a time to suit. Areas such as finance, computer skills, customer service, visual merchandising, marketing and accounting are just examples of what will be available.”

For more details contact:
Mandy Payne, Coordinator, Retail Skillshop Dorset
07711305958