--- title: "Placing an instructor in Italy · Davide Scalera" description: "You have a client in Italy and nobody on the ground: which language to run in, classroom or virtual, who writes the material, and what funded schemes add." url: https://davidescalera.it/en/guides/placing-an-instructor-in-italy lang: en --- # Placing an instructor in Italy: what changes for language, delivery and paperwork I have a client in Italy and nobody in the area: what changes compared with a delivery at home? short answer Four things: the language the room actually wants, whether it runs on site or virtual, who owns the material, and the paperwork if the client uses an Italian funded scheme. The teaching does not change. What changes is how much you agree before the date. by **Davide Scalera**, contract instructor for training providers in Italy and abroad, delivering in English and Italian · updated 11 October 2026 ## What actually changes when the room is in Italy? Less than people expect on the teaching, more than people expect on the agreements. The craft is the same: a room, a group, exercises on their own work. The friction sits in four places, and all four can be settled in one call. The first is language, which is almost never the one written in the brief. The second is whether the client wants someone physically in the room, which in Italy is still common for anything about changing how people work. The third is the material: who writes it, in which language, and who keeps it afterwards. The fourth is paperwork, and it only appears when the client pays through an Italian funded scheme. If your client is a subsidiary of an international group, expect one more layer: the training may be decided at headquarters and delivered to people who did not ask for it. That changes the first twenty minutes of the session more than any of the four points above. ## Which language should the session run in? Ask the participants, not the person signing. Buyers in Italy often say English because the group is technical or because the group has English in the job description. The room then turns out to be mixed, and the quiet half stops asking questions. A useful test before the date: send three sentences of the real content to two or three participants and ask whether they would rather work on that in English or in Italian. The answer comes back fast, and it is usually not what the buyer said. ▸ Session in Italian, material in English: works well, and it is what I do most often for subsidiaries that have to keep one set of documents across countries. ▸ Session in English with an Italian instructor: works when the group uses English daily and the exercises are on English documents. ▸ Session in English with everything in English, in a mixed room: this is where you lose people, and you find out in the feedback forms. I deliver in English and in Italian, and the choice between them is a delivery decision. ## On site or virtual, and what the client expects For anything meant to change how people work, Italian clients still lean towards the classroom, and they are not wrong: the exercises need people at tables, and the corridor conversation after the session is where half the adoption happens. Virtual works well for tool training, for short refreshers, and when a group is spread across sites. It also lets you run four short sessions instead of two long days, which is the shape that sticks. Practical things worth agreeing in advance: who books the room and checks the projector, whether participants bring their own laptops with the real files, and how long before the start the instructor is on site. I ask for thirty minutes, and it is the cheapest insurance you can buy against a broken HDMI cable. On travel, anywhere in Italy is a train ride or a short flight. Remote I work on Central European Time, which overlaps with most of Europe and gives a workable morning for the UK and an early afternoon slot for the Gulf. ## Who writes the material, and who keeps it Three arrangements, the same as anywhere, and they decide the preparation time. ▸ You provide the deck and the instructor delivers it. Fastest to book, and the quality of the session is the quality of your deck. ▸ The instructor brings their own, updated from current projects. You get material that matches this year, and you agree in writing who keeps the files. ▸ The material is built on the client’s own documents, anonymised. It takes days of preparation before the room, and it is the version participants still use a month later. If your catalogue course carries a vendor code, that is a separate question: those courses need a trainer certified by that vendor, and it is worth confirming with the vendor before you promise a date. On everything else I deliver with my own material, built on the processes of the company in the room. Translation deserves one line of its own. A deck translated word for word reads as translated, and an Italian room notices in the first five minutes. Either have it rewritten in Italian by someone who knows the subject, or keep it in English and let the delivery carry the language. Sources: [Microsoft Learn, Microsoft Certified Trainer: training partners must deliver official Microsoft courseware with certified trainers ↗](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/mct-certification) (read on 11/10/2026) ## If the client pays through an Italian funded scheme Italian companies can fund training through interprofessional funds, which are financed by contributions they already pay. When a course runs on that money, the rules tighten, and they are not negotiable. ▸ The hours are kept to the minute. Four hours means four hours, whether or not the group got it in three. ▸ Attendance registers are signed at the start and end of each session, and they have to match what happened. ▸ The training mode written in the plan stays: a classroom course does not turn into self-paced e-learning halfway. Whether a classroom day runs on site or live online is a different matter: at Fondimpresa it is confirmed day by day, by the day before. So half on site and half remote can work, as long as each day is declared in time. That is Fondimpresa’s rule; other funds may differ, so check the call. The administration belongs to the provider or the intermediary managing the plan, not to the instructor. What you need from the instructor is someone who respects it without arguing, signs what has to be signed, and does not improvise a better agenda in the room because the group asked for something else. One practical consequence for your scheduling: the plan is reviewed before it runs, at Fondimpresa normally within 30 days, so plan for weeks, not days. A company in a hurry can start right after submitting the plan, at its own risk: if the plan is rejected, the company pays for everything. Sources: [Italian Law 388/2000, art. 118: interprofessional funds are financed by the training contribution employers already pay (Normattiva) ↗](https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:2000-12-23;388~art118) (read on 11/10/2026) · [Fondimpresa, management and reporting guide for company training plans (Conto Formazione): attendance registers signed on entry and exit, training modes fixed in the plan, on site or live online confirmed for each day by the day before, plan review normally within 30 days, early start at the company’s risk (pp. 26-29) ↗](https://www.fondimpresa.it/sites/default/files/fondimpresa/canali-di-finanziamento/conto-formazione/Guida_alla_gestione_e_rendicontazione_agg_2022-04-01_def.pdf) (read on 11/10/2026) ## How do you brief an instructor you have never met? Send four things: who is in the room with their roles, what the client said they want, what the client actually complained about, and the material if you have it. The gap between the second and the third is where the session gets designed. Ask for three things back: how they would open the session, one exercise they would run with that group, and what participants will hold at the end. Vague answers here predict vague sessions. Then have one call with the client contact in the room, twenty minutes, instructor included. It costs nothing and it catches the things nobody writes down: that two participants are new, that the tool was rolled out badly last year, that the person who asked for the course has left. After the first delivery, ask the client the question the feedback form does not ask: has anything changed in how people work. The answer tells you whether to book that instructor again. ## Frequently asked questions - Which language should the session run in? Ask the participants, not the buyer. A common and effective setup is delivery in Italian with the material in English. A mixed room running fully in English is where you lose the quiet half. - Can it be half on site and half remote? Yes for a normal corporate course. Inside an Italian funded scheme it depends on the fund: at Fondimpresa, classroom days can run on site or live online, confirmed day by day by the day before, while the training mode written in the plan stays. Other funds may set different rules. - Who handles the funded-scheme paperwork? The provider or the intermediary managing the plan. The instructor signs the registers, keeps the hours to the minute and delivers the agenda that was approved. Languages, delivery formats, time zone, the courses I cover and how I work with providers are in the trainer profile. ## The trainer profile One PDF with what a decision-maker needs: courses, languages, formats, how I work, the criteria for choosing, the numbers. Plus a sample 16-hour Microsoft Copilot programme. - the courses I can deliver right away, by area, with durations - languages, locations, formats - how I run a session and what participants keep - the criteria for choosing an external instructor - the numbers, with their basis - a sample programme: Microsoft Copilot, 16 hours If you are matching me to a course already in your catalogue, the training page lists what I deliver and in which formats: [the training page](https://davidescalera.it/en/training) related guides - [How to vet an external AI instructor before putting them in front of a classI need to put an instructor I don’t know in front of a client, or on the catalogue: how do I know they’ll hold the room?](https://davidescalera.it/en/guides/vetting-an-external-ai-instructor) - [Trainer, instructor, consultant: who does whatI need someone to bring AI into my team, or onto my catalogue: what is the person I’m looking for called?](https://davidescalera.it/en/guides/trainer-instructor-consultant)