Staff training
Find training courses in Northern Ireland
There are many organisations offering training courses throughout Northern Ireland. There are also free online training resources to help you and your staff develop their skills and make your business more competitive.
Free short-term courses (Skill Up programme)
The Department for the Economy is supporting up to 2,000 free places on a range of fully accredited courses, to help individuals retrain and improve their skills. The courses will be delivered by local universities and Further Education colleges through the Skill Up programme. Find out more on the Skill Up programme: Retrain and upskill your staff.
Open University courses
The Open University has partnered with Invest Northern Ireland to provide local businesses with online training and learning resources to support upskilling in industry.
The Open University has also partnered with the Department for the Economy to offer a range of free training to help you improve your skills and wellbeing.
The Open University offers a wide range of online courses.
Other online courses
AbilityNet helps people of any age and with any disability to use technology to achieve their goals at home, at work, and in education.
Alison is a free learning platform for education and skills training. It is a not-for-profit social enterprise dedicated to making it possible for anyone, to study anything, anywhere, at any time, for free online, at any subject level.
AWS Training & Certification is free to register and offers over 500 free courses to build AWS Cloud Skills.
BBC Skillswise offers a collection of free videos and downloadable worksheets to help adult learners improve their reading, writing and numeracy skills.
BT Skills for Tomorrow offers a range of free resources anyone can use to help them stay safe, connected and informed online.
Business Model Canvas helps you develop business direction, appraisals and create new value propositions and business direction.
Carnegie Trust in partnership with CILIP Library Association offers online development materials on leadership and innovation, including transformation, creativity, and innovation, influencing skills and power.
Class Central offers several thousand free online courses that have been developed by a number of top universities from across the globe, including in ICT and business.
Class of 2020 offers learning and development materials on upskilling programmes for graduates, including short courses, live webinars, business challenges, and questions and answers.
Coursera brings together courses and certificates provided online for free by a variety of universities and companies. The main focus is on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with additional material in other areas also available.
Google Digital Garage offers over 40 hours worth of training to get the digital skills you need to start your career or grow your business.
Invest NI offers a wide range of tools and business tutorials to support improvements in business processes and growth. The training needs analysis workshops also give you an insight into the tools and techniques used by learning and development professionals to analyse training needs.
Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that let learners study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom, offering mathematics, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more.
Learn My Way is a website of free online courses, built by Good Things Foundation to help people develop their digital skills.
Oxford Home Study College offers a range of fully certified provision including cybersecurity, digital marketing, life coaching, and planning.
Training Matchmaker offers a range of free short courses, based online or across Northern Ireland, in a wide range of technical and vocational areas.
UK Learns is a new online learning platform, offering a wide range of largely free, certified courses, which have been identified by employers as relevant for future employment.
Business Events Finder
You can also search our Events Finder for business-related training, workshops, conferences and webinars from a variety of organisations.
Choosing a training provider: what to consider
When deciding who to select for your training provider, you should consider:
- Does the trainer understand your business? Is their experience relevant to your sector?
- Is the training at the right level, is it tailored to your business, as opposed to being a generic course?
- Do the logistics of the training satisfy you? Is it hosted online or held at an appropriate venue, at the right times and dates that suit your schedule?
- Is the trainer or training business linked to any associations that can recommend them?
- Could you speak to other clients who have undergone the training?
It is likely that there will be a number of suppliers offering possible courses. You should investigate each one thoroughly to ensure they meet your requirements before going ahead.
