An employer bought memberships for forty staff and told us it was for their wellbeing. In the first six months, four people used them.
That is the ordinary outcome of a company scheme and it is nobody's fault in particular. A discount handed to somebody who has never trained and does not know where to start is not an invitation, it is a reminder that they have not started.
In the second year we changed three things. We ran an induction for the whole staff in work time, in two groups, at their office first and then here. We put twenty two of them through the beginners programme in four intakes. And we reported attendance to the employer as a number rather than as a list of names, which we had to insist on.
Twelve of the forty now train at least twice a week and have done for over a year. Another nine come irregularly. Nineteen never came and probably never will, and we told the employer that was a normal result rather than a failure.
The employer's own view was that an induction in work time was what bought the whole thing.
