How to run joining instructions and registers for a training course

Joining instructions and registers run well when the delegates' names are collected early, every reply is answered the day it arrives, the trainer gets one final list, and the register has a date by which it is due back. It is one job with two ends. Before the course, every delegate must know where to be, when, and what to bring, and the trainer must have a list of who is coming. After it, the register and the papers must come back, because nothing can be certificated without them.

It starts when a customer books seats without names

A customer reserves six places on a course in March and will "confirm names nearer the time". From then until the register is filed, somebody in your office owns that course's paperwork.

Who does what, from booking to register returned

1. Collect the names. Each delegate's name as it should appear on a certificate, and an email address. The course administrator chases the booker.

2. Send the joining instructions. Date, start and finish times, venue, parking, what to bring, any identification needed, any pre-course work, and a question about access or learning needs. A training management system can send these on a schedule.

3. Read what comes back. Swap this delegate, move that one to April, one has a hearing impairment, where is the entrance. The administrator reads each reply and changes the record, tells the trainer or the venue, and sometimes changes the invoice.

4. Chase the pre-course forms and pre-course work.

5. Send the trainer the final list. The register with the names printed, the access needs the trainer must know about, and the count.

6. The trainer takes the register on the day, with the assessment papers and the evaluation forms.

7. Get it all back. The administrator chases a trainer who is by then delivering somewhere else.

8. Reconcile. The register against the booking: who did not come, who came in someone else's place, who left at lunchtime. Only then can results be checked and certificates follow.

Why the details matter

Several of those steps have a regulator or an awarding body behind them. For first aid courses, HSE's guide for employers in Great Britain says that where a class is larger than 12 there may be concerns unless extra trainers or assessors are provided, so the count in step 5 is a check, not a courtesy. The same guide says delegates' learning or communication difficulties should be passed to the provider, which should then make reasonable adjustments. It tells employers to look for a provider with a documented course evaluation procedure that includes students' feedback, and a detailed record of each student's assessment kept for at least three years after the course.

On a qualification Ofqual regulates in England, Condition C2.3 says the awarding organisation's agreement with your centre must require you to take all reasonable steps to comply, as soon as practicable, with its requests and Ofqual's for information or documents, and to retain the data, learners' marked work included, that it considers necessary to scrutinise your assessment. A register that never came back is a gap in that file.

And what a delegate tells you about a health condition is special category data under UK GDPR. Who sees it, and where it is kept, is a rule to set once, for all courses.

Which steps an AI worker can take on

Leave step 2 to your system: a training management system can send the joining instructions themselves on a schedule. The work around them is where an AI worker fits. Set up as AI staff, with a defined job and a named person who checks it, the worker can take steps 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and the first half of 8.

• It can chase bookers for names, and delegates for forms, at the intervals you set.

• It can read the replies, answer the practical questions from your venue notes, make a swap or a transfer your terms allow, and pass the rest to a coordinator.

• It can prepare the final list for the trainer and tell the coordinator when a course is over its class size or under the number you need to run it.

• It can chase the trainer for the register, the papers and the evaluation forms until they are in, then compare the register with the booking and list every difference.

What waits for a person, and why

Any message about a health condition or an adjustment goes to a coordinator, because deciding what the trainer and the venue need to know is a judgement about a person. The worker passes it on unanswered and unfiled. So does a transfer or cancellation outside your terms, and whether a thin course runs. Whether someone who missed part of the course can be certificated is your centre's decision under the awarding body's rules. Marking, results and anything submitted to an awarding organisation are your people's work. A trainer who has gone quiet needs a phone call, and calls stay with your team.

What to have ready before you start

• One set of joining instructions per course and per venue, with the questions delegates always ask already answered.

• Your terms on swaps, transfers and cancellations, written so that someone new could apply them.

• A date for names and a date for registers: for example, names a week before, the register back the next working day.

• A rule on who sees access and health information.

• The maximum and minimum class size for each course.

Set those five down and the job improves at once, whoever does it. How it fits the ratio of delegates to administrators is in our article on scaling a training provider without hiring. Joining instructions and registers are two of the jobs on our page for training providers, which also covers trainer diaries, refresher reminders and unpaid invoices.

The worker would answer the replies and chase the registers, and your coordinators would keep the trainers, the customers and every decision about a learner. Talk to our agent about the registers still out from last week's courses.