The 5-Week Model. Why Confidence-Building Needs Time (But Not Too Much)
The Wrong Question Most Funders Ask
When organisations commission training, they often ask, "How fast can you deliver this?" The assumption is that faster delivery means more people trained, better ROI, and faster results. So training gets compressed.
But speed is the enemy of confidence-building. And confidence-building is what actually creates employment change.
The real question isn't "how fast can we deliver this?" It's "what's the minimum time needed for someone to genuinely believe they can do this?"
The answer is five weeks. Not two weeks. Not ten weeks. Five weeks.
Why Shorter Doesn't Work
In the first week of training, people are still in learning-mode. They're absorbing new information, adjusting to the environment, figuring out if they belong there. Confidence isn't built yet. They're just getting oriented.
By week two, they're starting to apply what they've learned. But the neural pathways are still forming. The new skills haven't become second nature. They still need close guidance.
Week three is where something shifts. They've done it enough times that it starts to feel less foreign. They're making mistakes and fixing them without immediately asking for help. They're starting to believe "I can actually do this."
Weeks four and five are consolidation. They're building speed, handling more complex projects, supporting each other as mentors, and internalizing the belief that they're capable.
Compress this to three weeks and you get knowledge transfer. You don't get confidence. People leave before the belief shifts.
This matters for your investment. Three-week programmes produce higher completion rates (they're shorter, easier to get through), but they don't produce employment or business growth. Five-week programmes take longer but produce the outcomes that actually justify the funding.
Why Longer Doesn't Necessarily Work Better
But does a 10-week programme build even more confidence? Not necessarily. And it introduces new problems.
Dropout risk increases. The longer a programme runs, the more competing demands pull people away. Some lose childcare, jobs start, life happens. Ten weeks is a long commitment that not everyone can sustain, especially if they're already vulnerable to disruption.
Motivation peaks and dips. Week two is usually optimistic. Week four is often where doubt creeps back in. Week six-eight is where people get tired. The extended length actually makes it harder to maintain the momentum that builds confidence.
Diminishing returns. After five weeks of intensive, in-person, hands-on training, people have either built confidence or they haven't. Additional weeks don't meaningfully increase confidence. They just delay employment or business application.
Cost efficiency matters. If you're funding training out of a fixed budget, five-week cohorts allow you to train more people annually than 10-week cohorts, with better outcomes per pound spent.
Why Five Weeks Is The Sweet Spot
Five weeks is long enough to:
Build genuine mastery (real practice at scale, not one-off exercises)
Create the social bonds that generate belief (people support each other through the hard part)
Move through the confidence dip (week 3-4 is hard; week 5 is breakthrough)
Complete substantive projects that prove capability
Establish new routine and belonging
Five weeks is short enough to:
Maintain momentum without burnout
Keep people committed despite competing demands
Sustain the intensity needed for real change
Finish before motivation naturally dips
Allow people to apply learning while it's fresh
This is based on what actually works, not on what's convenient. We could run two-week programmes if speed was the goal. We could run eight-week programmes if we wanted to maximise contact hours. But neither would change lives the way five weeks does.
In-Person Five-Week Training Changes the Equation
Here's what makes five weeks work, it's in-person.
Virtual training even if it were five week wouldn't work the same way because the key ingredient is absent: presence.
When people are in the same room for five weeks, they build relationships. They see each other struggle and succeed. They hold each other accountable. They create a sense of belonging that directly builds confidence. A trainer who knows them personally can push them in ways that matter. They can spot when someone's confidence is crumbling and intervene before they quit.
None of that happens virtually. So the timeline changes. You'd need more weeks in a virtual model to build the same confidence. And you'd still fall short because the relational element is missing.
What This Means for Your Funding Strategy
If you're designing a digital skills training intervention, don't optimise for speed. Optimise for outcomes. That means;
Reject two or three-week programmes (they don't work)
Be cautious of programmes longer than six or seven weeks (diminishing returns)
Demand in-person delivery (it's essential to the model)
Measure outcomes at 6 months (not completion rates)
Plan for cohorts that repeat (multiple five-week cohorts throughout the year beats fewer longer cohorts)
Five weeks isn't arbitrary. It's the result of understanding what actually builds confidence and what allows people to apply that confidence in their jobs and businesses.