Training Budgets Have a Big Impact

Just recently I have met several trainers who are struggling to cope with a shrinking training budget. Fair enough, you might think. Everyone is having to trim the budget across all areas of any company. But have senior managers thought through the consequences of reducing the training budget?

As a training resources developer, I have to admit to some self-interest in this, because when budgets shrink we aren't called in to help. There are, however, more critical issues to the slash and burn across the board when it reaches the training budget. Short term consequences from chopping a training budget:

• The trainer has more training to do with fewer tools
• Trainers become stretched, stressed and perform less efficiently
  
• Fewer qualified trainers are brought in to raise the skill base of employees
• Normal regular training is done less often
• The trainer is left making value-decisions between competing, equally-valuable training needs

The long term consequences have a greater impact:

• Their commitment to training wanes and the malaise spreads to other staff
• The general skill level of employees starts to sink
• Employees begin making errors of judgment because they don't remember 'how'
• When work picks up there is a huge and expensive backlog to catch-up and become competitive
  

By comparison to the rest of a company's budget training is a small percentage, yet in times of retrenchment the value of training increases the likelihood of survival for the company (and sometimes the employees). The brave and future-focused company seizes the downturn to train, train train.

Edutech KM was recently involved in developing a new training program to increase productivity on manufacturing sites. The project aimed to give supervisory employees an increased understanding of what makes a company profitable, and of course, to apply that understanding at work. It was a radical departure from the usual training undertaken in the industry. Part of the course required trainees to address a production issue on their work site. The potential savings estimated from solving these issues was staggering.

Naturally the ITO that sponsored the program wanted to find out if the training program worked. The ITO undertook to investigate some of the results from solving the issues. It was an easy demonstration of ROI for training investment. You can read a three-screen summary of the course design and link to the three case studies where a definite ROI was established.

I'm probably preaching to the converted if you're a trainer, but these case studies, courtesy of FITEC, could give power to your arm if you're trying to make a case to restore your training budget. We can certainly talk to you about ways to maximise what you do have.

How to Handle Mean Coworkers | eHow.com

How to Handle Mean Coworkers | eHow.com
This is a site rich in ideas for handling conflict with co-workers. Often conflict and inability to handle it stymies effective change in a workplace. Building some of these skills can support trainees implement positive change once they return from a course.
We're all aware of how easy it is for trainees to fall back into old ways, simply because the site culture won't allow change.

The Winds of Change in Training

Over the Christmas Season we've experienced personally, or through our TV screens, some unsettled, exceptional weather. My partner literally escaped from Salisbury, England, to Heathrow and home as the first snows fell. Hours later, satellite pictures showed Britain blanketed in snow from north to south. Melbourne, meanwhile, shimmered in unbearable heat.

Haiti suffered a massive earthquake that followed fast on tremors felt in many parts of the globe. Ice bergs broke away from the Poles and drifted up into our warmer waters. The physical world, it seems, is trembling on the brink of major change.

Economically organisations are climbing out of difficult times. We realise we can no longer carryout business using past practices, but immersed in the business or doing business it's hard to define how we could do it better.

What skills will our employees need to help us grow our markets? What new products, opportunities or markets are opening up to us? And even if we spot an opportunity, how quickly can we respond to it? They're age-old questions coming to us now at the speed of light.

For years, training has focused on imparting skills that ensure the products or services we produce are created with quality and accuracy. Technology has now advanced in ways that reduce human fallibility, yet still our companies make costly mistakes.

At Edutech KM we've heard the stories from employees who knew that proposed production changes or a new product design wouldn't work, or would cause problems downstream. But did they speak up? Of course not! They didn't believe anyone (i.e.: 'management') would listen to them. Often their beliefs (about not being listened to) have been based on past experience. But even if an employee's belief is a false assumption, the impact is the same. There is undeniably a huge divide between what management tells employees and employees tell management.

One wakeful night I was putting my mind to this dilemma: Is training for skills enough in this new century? What type of training would make a significant change in the way we do, and succeed at, business? The world is overrun by courses that will teach managers to do business well, however, if you think about the companies that succeed best, they are peopled with employees who know they are valued and their contribution is welcomed.

Perhaps we should be looking at two streams of change in training:
1. Train employees to think and speak up
2. Train managers to listen to employees

For this to succeed, employees need to see the larger picture of how their behaviour affects company success and their own long term security. Actually, they need to understand business. Could this lead to a radical about face in training?
1. Give employees business training
2. Give managers skills training

Then we'd all be speaking the same language.