What Training Should You Actually Be Doing With Your Staff?

Getting your staff on board with the values of your dance or theatre school is crucial, and a big part of that comes down to training. But what training do you actually need to run, and should you even bother if most of your staff are freelancers?

Yes, Even With Freelancers

The answer is yes. Even with freelancers, training still matters.

Picture this. You’re teaching in one room, and a teacher in the room next door has a completely different style. Not just in terms of dance style, tap, modern, jazz, street, but in their whole way of teaching. If that way of working sits against the values of your school, you’re heading for a clash.

Children going to their class will get a genuinely different experience to children coming to yours. And ultimately, it’s your brand, your values, and your way of working that’s being marketed out into the world. When that’s not consistent across your team, problems start to surface. And they will surface, even when you’re convinced they won’t.

This is exactly why getting freelancers properly on board with your values and your systems is so important. If a teacher hands children over in a way that doesn’t match your process, that’s a real problem, especially if your process is built into your safeguarding policy because you’ve identified it as the safest way to deliver that handover. Their way instead of your way isn’t just a style difference at that point, it’s a risk.

This is why I built a 15 step hiring process for staff when I ran my school, and I never deviated from it. The one time I did, I hit a problem. Every new teacher then went through a thorough onboarding process too, covering the handover procedure, meet and greet, health and safety, fire regulations, where the first aid kit is kept, how the register or database works, and risk assessments. All the things a new member of staff genuinely needs to know to do their job properly.

Training your staff isn’t optional. It’s crucial.

How Often Should You Train Them?

Onboarding training is non-negotiable, that has to happen, in full, every time. Beyond that, aim for somewhere between two and four sessions a year as a minimum.

If your staff are regularly in the same building, you might manage a short session every six weeks, quick and focused, just touching on one thing at a time. If you’re working with freelancers scattered across different schedules, getting everyone in one room might take what feels like a wing, a prayer, and a letter from Santa. In that case, you might only manage two sessions a year, and that’s fine.

Zoom is always an option if bringing everyone together physically isn’t realistic. You can also split your team and run the same session twice for different groups. It takes your time, yes, but pulling your staff together in some form, regularly, is worth protecting.

Whether it’s short and frequent or longer and less often depends entirely on what actually works for your team. But it has to happen, without fail.

What Should The Training Actually Cover?

Rules, regulations and health and safety. Terms and conditions, safeguarding, health and safety. This is an absolute must, non-negotiable, every time.

Your values, expectations and retention. These can often be combined into one session rather than run as entirely separate trainings.

Skill and idea sharing. If you run preschool classes, bring all your preschool teachers together for a skill share. Someone’s favourite warm up, someone else’s brilliant name game, a great way to bring concentration back into the room. If you teach the same age group year after year, it’s easy to feel like you’re running on autopilot, even though every new class is meeting that material for the first time. A bit of fresh input goes a long way.

Show prep. This one is essential if you put on a show. I call it the show showdown, or the staff showdown. Get the whole team together, in one room, or take them away somewhere with food laid on, or push the boat out entirely and take them for a full weekend intensive. Get everyone aligned on the music, the costumes, who needs help, who needs support, who’s got an idea worth hearing. It’s what pulls a show together as one cohesive thing rather than several disconnected pieces.

Competition team planning. If you have teachers running your competition teams, a dedicated session on the upcoming season, what you’re doing, where you’re going, which competitions to enter, is genuinely valuable. Those teachers have insight worth hearing, and asking for their input does more than improve your planning. It makes them feel valued, understood, and genuinely part of the school’s success. So ask, and actually listen.

Team building, just for fun. A meal out, an escape room, anything that isn’t about the job at all. It matters too.

There’s no shortage of training you could run with your staff. The most important thing, by far, is that you actually do it.

I have a whole training on staff in The Den Business School or if you are wanting a bigger more high impact bespoke service then EVOLVE maybe a possibility for you.