We want to challenge you about how you make decisions around training for staff. Let’s start with a quick quiz – ‘do you deliver great training?’ Go on, be brave… and feel free to share this with colleagues in other organisations too.
This quiz is designed for employers and also in-house trainers/ HR/managers who deliver training, or have the responsibility of arranging training within organisations.
QUIZ: DO YOU DELIVER GREAT TRAINING?
Decision making
- Is the person who makes decisions about training taking a strategic (rather than reactive) approach to what is required, how best to provide it and how to measure ROI (return on investment)? Yes/no/sometimes
- Before any training course is organised, do you take time to think through what outcomes or changed behaviours you expect as a result of the training and how you will measure those? Yes/no/sometimes
- Does your training budget include figures for both financial spend and staffing costs to attend training (e.g. what is the cost of a manager being away from their job for 3 hours)? Yes/no/sometimes
Type of training (classroom, eLearning, coaching, mentoring, role swapping, technology based etc.)
- Is your HR team or L&D team innovative in their approach to deciding what type of training is required whenever there is a development need established? Yes/no/sometimes
- Does the type of training you deliver demonstrate confidence in new and innovative types of training (e.g. gamification, eLearning, blended learning programmes etc.)? Yes/no/sometimes
- Is sufficient use made of coaching and mentoring within your organisation to address development needs? Yes/no/sometimes
Training content
- Can you claim to have never knowingly delivered training that you know delegates will find boring? Yes/no/sometimes
- Does all of your training take into consideration the fact that learning over a long period of time has been proven to achieve better results than short bursts of learning that is never repeated or reinforced? Yes/no/sometimes
- Is the content of your training courses enhanced by the confidence of your trainers in the use of modern technology and innovative training tools? Yes/no/sometimes
Return on investment (ROI)
- Do your trainers who love the buzz of delivering training, put equal effort/energy into measuring ROI? Yes/no/sometimes
- If you use eLearning for certain development needs are you achieving what you really need to achieve with it in respect of learning and changed behaviours? Yes/no/sometimes
- Do you ever tell delegates what the cost per person has been for a particular programme or course and ask them to evaluate the ROI and provide real life examples of that ROI? Yes/no/sometimes
So how did you do? We hope that these few questions are useful in helping you to understand where you might focus your attention in the coming months in order to get the best out of your L&D initiatives and budget.
TIME TO INVEST IN YOU?
As we all know the world has changed enormously in recent years as a result of that, what is required of people at work has changed hugely too. We often see L&D professionals organising courses and programmes for staff, but we seldom see L&D professionals organising training for themselves to ensure their knowledge, skills and confidence put them at the top of their game. Is there a tendency to always want to spend the L&D budget on others and too much guilt about spending it on ourselves?
Its critical though that the HR and L&D function does take time out to navel gaze and put its own house in order from time to time. If it doesn’t do this, the service it delivers will not be at the level it needs to be at during times of significant change.
These are the skills gaps we most frequently see amongst L&D professionals and please don’t take this as a criticism, these are simply the areas that we feel money could be well spent in developing the skill sets, knowledge and confidence of trainers:
- Confidence in and competence with technology
- Commercial knowledge that helps trainers to manage and calculate ROI
- Understanding how to be endlessly creative and innovative in what they create and deliver in order to constantly strive for more effective and behaviour changing training.
- Confidence to be courageous in pursuing new ideas and delivering in new ways
- Ability to see how each course or programme fits into the bigger L&D picture to ensure time and money is always spent in the most effective way.
A few years ago we identified that many more organisations wanted to deliver training in-house rather than use external trainers. In addition we saw many more organisations using line managers to deliver training to their own teams. This is great as it puts the training right in the heart of the organisation and means that it will always be made appropriate and relevant to the ‘day jobs’ of the delegates.
To reflect this increased desire to deliver training without relying on external trainers, we created Training Wizard and are absolutely delighted to have had so much positive feedback our training materials. Browse our training materials.
Our individual modules start from £49+VAT and full courses start from £225+VAT. If you are a new customer and are trying Training Wizard for the first time then email us for a discount code which can be used against any module – pay just £5+VAT. One trial module per customer.
DELVE INSIDE!
See what just a few people have said about our training materials:
- I hate the hard work of creating a course but love delivering training, so this is just perfect.
- Great idea to have everything you need in one place. If I buy a course it can be used in each of our sites around the UK, and then I can be confident they are all delivering the same material and in the same way.
- I can’t believe I can just buy training materials and then deliver the contents as many times as I like. So straightforward and cost effective.
- Love the branding, the layout and the fact that the handouts I need are all included, so I can literally just print out what I need and when.
- Great to see you have presented it in a modular approach. I find it impossible nowadays to get line managers into a training course for more than 2 hours at a time. Just one hour at a time when we are really busy.