At The Outsourced Training Company we provide a wide range of outsourced learning and development, managed training services for a number of large clients. As a result we have developed very close relationships with the Learning and Development (L&D) teams in the respective organisations. There remains a constant debate as to whether training is a necessity or actually forms part of the reward mechanism for the employee. Then there’s the additional issue as to who benefits most.
There are a number of training requirements that have to be delivered such as: mandated Health and Safety, licences to operate (e.g. Fork lift truck driving) and specialist equipment and processes. These are the kind of things that keep the executives out of court and need to be done.
But what about the more ethereal side of the fence, such as: transferable skills training, leadership, chartership (e.g. CIMA, SIPS etc). There’s an argument that all you are doing is arming your employee with a cracking CV to go and jump ship to the next better paid job as soon as it comes along. The other argument is that by investing time, resource and money in your employee you will get better productivity, efficiency, motivation and loyalty as a result.
We all know the way to measure it is through some form of complex Return on Investment measure usually based around the famous Kirkpatrick Cycle, but usually the analysis just doesn’t nail the simple truth. I find that internal L&D teams are so close to the trees that it’s difficult to fix and effective measure despite reams of Management information being on tap. As part of the service provision included within an outsourced training provider its key to have an objective set of ROI techniques and processes. We can usually get to the heart of it and tell you whether you’re paying for CV development or adding value to your operation.
