Training rooms provide a versatile space which can be used for a number of different activities. You might have an IT training day coming up for your team, or you'd like a space in which to run occasional yoga sessions – whatever the reason, a comfortable space will let you escape the office for a few hours and recharge your batteries in a new environment.
At Zipcube, we understand the importance of setting up a training room in a way that's hassle free. If your company needs a brainstorming session to develop some innovative new ideas and approaches, you want to focus on feeling creative without wasting energy on bookings and enquiries. If you've allocated resources for L&D, to motivate your team and train everyone with fresh skills, you don't want to be distracted by malfunctioning projectors or painfully slow computers. That's why Zipcube have shortlisted the best training rooms London has to offer, all in one place: to save you the stress and make the experience as positive and fun as possible.
What Can I Hire a Training Room For?
- Coaching sessions can sometimes feel like a drag, especially for more senior team members who feel they get in the way of their regular work. Booking a training space especially for the occasion can liven things up and generate extra enthusiasm.
- If you've just recruited some new hires and want to help onboard them in the company culture, arranging an out-of-office introductory meeting is a great way to get them excited and make them feel valued.
- If your team needs some very specific IT training or want to practise their presentation skills, you might not have all the necessary equipment in the office. Venues which specialise in running training sessions will likely have the exact resources you need.
- You might be a personal trainer whose usual Pilates studio is out of action, if that's the case you'll find that training spaces can be a great fallback option for exercise sessions.
- A training room is a space in which to think freely, away from the regular hang-ups of the office. If you need to host an important internal presentation – where new ideas and honest feedback is vital – then an external event space is always a strong option.
What Do I Need to Know Before Booking a Training Room?
- Consider your budget to make sure you have money left over for extra perks like catering and refreshments. Location is important, but so is a hot cup of coffee in the afternoon.
- If you do decide to book a training space that's quite far from the office, make sure to check with your team that everyone is OK with the added journey time. After all, London is a big city...
- If your training is quite physical – a manual handling course or fire safety demonstration, for example – make sure you double-check the venue size and attendance numbers ahead of time. You wont want people falling over each other in a cramped space.
- Give plenty of thought to the timings, it's easy to forget, but setting up at the start and packing up at the end can take longer than you might expect.
- Not every room will be as high-tech as you might think, be sure to let the venue know your requirements well ahead of schedule in case they need to make special arrangements.
- If you're unsure about how much space you'll require, you might want to take a look at a few other options. We also have a great selection of presentation rooms, function rooms and corporate event venues.
What Makes For a Great Training Session?
- If you're in charge of the presentation, try to keep things varied. A combination of group discussions and individual exercises will help to break up your script and keep things interesting.
- Any kind of audiovisual element will help to maintain the audience's concentration and also make the content more memorable; so if you can use music, or projected videos and images, it'll make a big difference.
- If this is a training session you run quite regularly – once or twice a year, say – try to think of ways to freshen things up a bit. Inserting topical references and new case studies will make the content feel more contemporary and meaningful.
- Don't hide behind the lectern or keep looking at your notes. If you want to engage the room, you'll need to be energetic and maintain eye contact.
- Personal touches always go down well. If you can explain to the audience why you care about your subject and offer some biographical details, it can help to capture their imagination.
- If you can work geographical details into your presentation as well, that can often prove very memorable. So if you've booked a training room in Holborn, try to work a historical detail about Fenner Brockway whose statue is over in Red Lion Square. If your training space is near London Bridge, you could work in a surprising fact about the Crossrail Project.
- There's lots of great advice online to help you improve your material. For starters, check out this article on training in the Harvard Business Review which discusses common training issues.
- Always leave time for a Q&A session at the end in case anyone is unsure about the material. Where possible, try to spend a bit of time beforehand anticipating the most likely questions so that you feel prepared when they come up.
- It's a fact of life that people become disinterested as they grow hungry or tired. Try to arrange your training room hire for in the morning or early afternoon and organise regular breaks for people to stretch their legs or have a snack.