How will the session be tailored to our work?
A provider who can quote a fixed program without asking about your staff is selling a presentation that already exists. A tailored session starts with questions: which roles attend, what tasks fill their week, which tools are approved and what the organisation's data rules are. Ask the provider what it needs from you before the day and who prepares the exercises. Then ask for one sample exercise built from a task you describe, such as summarising a supplier contract or drafting a reply to a difficult customer email. The sample shows whether the provider understands the work or only the tool.
Which tool and accounts will participants use?
The session should run on the tool your organisation has approved, using work accounts. Be wary of a provider that asks staff to create personal accounts for the day, or that demonstrates on its own premium account while participants watch. Both teach habits that do not survive the return to work. Ask how the provider handles participants whose access fails on the day, and whether it checks access beforehand. If you have not chosen a tool yet, the provider should say so and help you settle it first instead of training on whatever is convenient.
What goes into the AI tools during exercises?
This question protects your organisation and your staff. The OAIC recommends, as best practice, that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools. Ask whether exercises use fictional material or your real documents, who prepares and checks that material, and where prompts and outputs end up after the session. The OAIC also describes a training company that asked a chatbot for fictional case studies and received a real case with real names, so generated scenarios need checking as well.
The provider will also handle information about your staff, such as names, roles and the work they bring. The OAIC notes that the Privacy Act's employee records exemption is unlikely to apply to organisations providing training services under contract to an employer, so ask how that information is stored and when it is deleted.
How much of the day is hands-on, and who helps?
Ask what share of the session participants spend working on tasks themselves and how many people each facilitator supports during that time. Practice is where people get stuck on an instruction, an access problem or an output they cannot judge, and someone needs to notice. A provider should be able to state its maximum group per facilitator and what it does above that number. Ask too whether the session runs on site or remotely and how that changes the hands-on time. Our formats page sets out the group sizes we work to, as one example of a written answer.
Is the training accredited, and do you need it to be?
According to the Australian Skills Quality Authority, registered training organisations are the only organisations in the Australian vocational training system authorised to deliver nationally recognised training and issue nationally recognised qualifications and statements of attainment. If a provider uses words such as accredited or nationally recognised, ask for its RTO code and the unit or course code, then check both on the National Training Register at training.gov.au. Many useful workshops are not nationally recognised, which is fine when you need capability rather than a formal record. An attendance certificate from a provider that is not an RTO records attendance and nothing more.
Which claims should make you cautious?
Some proposal language signals a provider selling confidence more than capability. A specific productivity figure for your team, given before the provider has seen your work, cannot rest on evidence about your team. A long list of tools covered in one session usually means demonstrations instead of practice. Treat each item below as a prompt for harder questions, and ask what evidence sits behind it. A provider with good answers will not mind being asked.
- A percentage time saving promised for your staff.
- Certification or badge names not linked to a registered training organisation.
- Ten or more products demonstrated in a single day.
- No question about your data rules or approved tools before quoting.
- An agenda that is identical for finance, sales and operations staff.
What happens after the day?
Most of the value of training shows up in the weeks after it, when people try the techniques on live work and hit problems. Ask what participants keep, such as a written reference or the prompts the group built, whether the commissioning manager receives notes on what the room found difficult, and what follow-up options exist and how they are priced. Ask too how the provider suggests you check whether the training worked. A provider that has thought about measurement will talk about observed changes in work, not only the feedback form.