The sky wont fall if you don't do your training this month!
Although the training budget is sometimes seen as a luxury and is often the first to be clipped when times are hard, training is, in fact, vital to the bottom-line. With training programmes today costing huge sums of money, there is much at stake, and it is important that you do your research before you invest in any one type of training and the organisation that is supplying it.
There is, indeed, great value in understanding and exploring how all of these benchmark companies do what they do. Looking for points of commonality that define their approach to Service Excellence is important to understand.Too much unsuitable and poorly conducted training that is nonetheless not followed through or plugged into any specific strategic node has given the industry a bad name.
So how do you go about
choosing training that is suitable and engaging training organisation that
delivers real and lasting results, as not a temporary high?
What is there to look out for?
1. Identifying a need
You must be completely clear about what you want from the training you seek; what skills gaps are to be filled and what attitudes you seek to shape. A fatal mistake when purchasing ‘off-the-shelf’ public courses is to merely purchase the course title, rather than focusing on the outcomes and content of the programme: ‘If you just pick something off the menu, you’re not giving yourself a good chance. It might even be a good course but it’s bad training as far as your circumstances are concerned because it doesn’t answer what you want it to answer.
You may want to consider the practicality of the model to the right.
2. Top management commitment
Obtaining the buy-in of the delegates’ line manager and cultivating a learning culture within an organisation are also absolutely vital. No matter how effective training is, when a delegate returns to work – often filled with new ideas and motivated after training – and is expected just to carry on as before with no support from above, learning can never be transferred back to the workplace and reinforced. If anything, this situation causes resentment and is a common reason why employees will leave employment soon after acquiring training; they feel charged and motivated, their self-esteem is significantly raised, but their manager does not see this. The competitor does.
It is important to involve the line manager right from the start: rather than a supervisor sending off an email to inform a member of the team about some imminent training, managers should take time to explain in person why the individual has been selected for the training and what the desired key things to learn are. Equally important is a follow-up discussion after the training to plan the implementation of the new skills. All this contributes to a much more motivated and receptive learner, and increases the value of the training.
3. Types of courses
So, having done a skills gap analysis you know exactly what course you need to fulfil your needs, you have the support of managers who are working to improve the learning culture of the organisation and help to embed the newly acquired skills. Now it’s time to look at the kinds of training on offer, since what you have is a profile of knowledge, skills and attitude gaps – and not the training to be done. Different types of courses will suit different companies.
Open courses
‘Off the shelf’ open courses are a lot less cost-effective than in-house courses, because of their attendant conferencing, travel and accommodation costs. While such courses may not be customised to the needs of individual attending them, if the determination of training needs has been done correctly, as has detailed research into the content of a particular open programme, there is no reason why they should not be effective. Other advantages of open programmes include the fact that taking your employees away from their everyday business routine and putting them into a fresh environment provides gainful relaxation of the mind, motivates them and stimulates them to perform. Open programmes also afford you good benchmarking and cross-fertilising opportunities, since your employees will meet individuals from other companies with similar aspirations. Open programmes are also a convenient way to train just one or two team members from your company.
Tailored in-house programmes
Tailored, in-house programmes, well managed, present many benefits to the organisation:
i. they are flexible and can be designed such that they do not take away your employees from their places of work for long period of time;
ii. the team has the privacy to discuss day-to-day problems and sensitive, company-specific issues;
iii. there are notable cost savings with respect to conferencing, travel and accommodation costs.
iv. if the number of people in need to a particular, homogeneous, training is greater than six, an in-house programme will almost always be the more cost-effective.
4. Qualifications and standards
While the training you are procuring may not be accredited there is no reason why your supplier should not be. Organisations like Microsoft and others have very stringent procedures for vetting potential suppliers in the courses they accredit. An organisation which has done enough in one area to reach the standard required by the accrediting organisation will generally offer high standards across the board.
There nonetheless does exist two problems around this. While certain accrediting organisations – and even universities – maintain a close supervisory role in the execution of courses they have accredited, others are merely interested in the subscriptions payable for such accreditation, and as such, accreditation in itself is not a guarantee.
Secondly, accrediting organisations will frequently make reference to a written examination, which in itself may not guarantee the quality of results that such accredited training is able to deliver in the workplace. Nothing beats the solid wisdom obtainable from technical, behavioural or other competencies glued together with years of experience – accredited or not.
You may therefore quite frequently find your own judgement of the provider, and of the client references he may provide, good enough to pass a judgement from.
5. Individual trainer capabilities
Of the approximately 200,000 full time training specialists in the UK, for example, only 24 per cent have a certificate in training skills – and much fewer in less developed markets. The rest may have certificates in presentation skills, but it seems that there are benefits to training the trainer courses, which focus on both the technical skills required of the training environment and also the more generic soft skills. It is absolutely vital that the individual trainer you engage has detailed understanding of how people learn, the different types of intelligences and the barriers to learning. Client references and testimonials are a useful way of finding out a training organisation’s style.
Good trainers should, at the minimum have:
A. In-depth knowledge about the areas being covered
Driven by demand and a need to survive, a lot of trainers are Jacks of all trades and masters of none. A skilled and experienced trainer should be able to relate the learning to real-world examples beyond the theory on which the training is based. One can only be so good in so many areas. For training to be beneficial it first has to be linked to proper development objectives of either the organisation, the individual or both and it is vital to focus on learning rather than training
B. Effective and flexible delivery
Poor trainers believe that training is all about them rather than the course participants and fail to take into account the different learning styles of participants. They deliver training limited to what they know or are interest in, using their preferred style, and within a programme that allows them to cover their contents. Effective training calls for a sensitive approach to learner requirements, their individual motivations interests, and capabilities
C. Personality
The personality of a trainer makes or breaks the training event. It is vital for trainers to be constantly sensitive to whether the group is getting closer to the learning outcomes or not. If you get the chance to meet with the individual trainer, put your gut feeling to good use – you will seldom be wrong.
There are several criteria that should be considered when evaluating consultant trainer’s training content quality:
i. are the objectives stated as outcomes relating to workplace behaviour?
ii. is the message at a level appropriate to the audience?
iii. are the course material effective, user-friendly and modern?
iv. is there sufficient interaction, stimulus and response?
v. are the exercises well-designed, appropriate and time-effective?
vi. is the cost reasonable and affordable relative to the benefits?
vii. are processes to maximise transfer of the training built in?
Unfortunately, sometimes, it is the client that is the problem. The business may, quite understandably, be pressed for time, budget and at the same time require wide-ranging knowledge, skills and attitudes within a particular target of some training. If you push the consultant to delver the widest scope of content, within the shortest period of time, for the highest number of people and at the lowest cost, and this becomes the condition upon which you will award the work, you definitely will find someone that will claim to be able to surpass your expectations on all this.
You may, regrettably, however, not want to be associated with the outcomes of such a decision.
D. The extra mile
Before making a decision on what training provider to use, it is a good idea to find out which ones provide a robust support programme both before and after the training event itself. It is important to see beyond the well-pitched presentation and colour brochures and be able to determine whether the training provider, in fact, has your best interests at heart. If your training provider has not dealt with a company of your kind before then it should make sense that they find time to come and learn about your organisation, the industry in which you operate, your unique aspects of culture, as well as the specific expectations that your target participants have of the training.
Post-training initiatives of some sort should give you some assurance that your training provider is there for the long haul and is not looking for a hit-and-run. These are nonetheless easy to promise and you must ensure that you get your money’s worth from such promises.
Give serious consideration to the methods your training provider uses to evaluate the training they conduc. A training provider that is committed to continual improvement is much more likely to supply training that adds value. It is easy to pick out these, especially as you grow your experience as a manager; new training providers come up every day, promising what they believe those already there are not, and in a short while, even newer names come, promising the same. Consistency, focus and progressive evolution of content, style and application will normally cut the difference between training providers you want to use, and those others that you really would rather not use.
In evaluating the effectiveness of training you will most certainly find the Kirkpatrick evaluation model useful, though it is important to share your expectations with your training provider well in advance.
E. Meeting the training organisation
It’s beneficial to find out a bit more about the individuals involved in the training before the event. You will gain significant insights by meeting your account manager at the training provider, and particularly the trainer who will be running the programme. If possible, allow a sample of the participants on the programme to interact with the trainer in advance as well. This way you close all the gaps and tie up all the loops. So often the training is booked between whoever is doing the purchasing and the account manager from the training company – but neither of them are going to be there.
Run through the following checklist as you make your decision:
1. has the course been run before and validated?
2. how much does the training organisation know about the subject you wish them to train?
3. have they worked with your industry/business before?
4. how will they measure the success of any programme they run with you?
5. can you work with them during the preparation stages to determine the training is relevant to your employees?
6. how much of the material is standard, off-the-shelf and how much of it is bespoke?
7. do you need a generic programme or does it need to be specific to your needs?
8. what guarantees do the companies offer in respect to the quality of the materials?
9. will you require follow-up work after the programme?
10. can your training provider offer coaching and telephone support to the trainees after the event?
11. what contingency plans do they offer if the programme doesn’t hit the mark?
6. Justifying the training budget
Consider the following tips as you develop a justification for the money spend on training:
1. dovetail your training plans with your company’s specific targets over the next year, two to three years;
2. create a framework to work within that is built around the objectives that come from these targets;
3. determine how learning and development can contribute to these targets
4. plan effective learning interventions to support these targets
5. show how the your company’s set targets will be achieved through your learning and development plans
6. develop a consistent form of communication with the relevant stakeholders to enhance your credibility
7. be proactive in your plans so that the department is seen to be actively contributing to the business’ performance
When it comes down to it an effective and suitable training provider can be chosen with a combination of gut feeling and common sense. Notwithstanding, by isolating the precise skills needed, getting the support of top management and then embarking on some extra research and asking a few questions there is much you can do to mitigate the all-too-often debacle that training could turn out to be.
Contemplate this: When was the last time you seriously gave thought to your choice of training provider?
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