I sometimes wonder how people are appointed to positions as trainers. Do some organisations see it as a position that people are moved if they might be good at it, and are then left to get on with it – without any training or support? Do businesses think training is such a waste of time that they just employ anyone in the position? Whatever the reason, there appear to be too many companies or trainers giving training a bad name.
I see requests for assistance from trainers on various forums, but I’m not sure how they expect people to be able to respond with targeted and focussed suggestions. I’m meaning where people are asking others to suggest methodologies. Here are a couple I have recently seen:
“I have a four-hour workshop to give on presentations skills. I see the same participants the following week and they have to give a five-minute using the information they’ve learned in just four hours. Any recommendations? No technology available for them except for one laptop. They do not have laptops themselves.”
“I work in a manufacturing facility and I am about to conduct management development training for supervisors/managers to teach them more about ‘HR in their jobs’. Does anyone have any good icebreakers that will compliment this training?”
Do these same people (or organisations) say, “I’m going to buy a car, which one would you recommend?”, or “I’m going on holiday and need a coat – which do you think I should buy?” I think not. So why do it for training?
Trainers asking such questions cannot expect to receive any sort of meaningful advice or assistance. And if they do use what is offered, does the organisation realise how much money it is potentially wasting?
Let’s say we have 12 people in our group, and each receives a salary of £100 per day. That means with salary on-costs they probably cost their organisation £120 per day. That’s £1,440 in wages for attending a day’s training. Add another £200 for the trainer’s delivery and preparation time, £100 for the administration of getting the people on to the course, £50 for room hire and £10 for photocopying costs – that gives us a total cost of £1,800 for the day. There may also be travel and meal costs, but we’ll leave it at this for the purpose of the exercise.
If we have 6.5 hours contact time, it means that each hour of delivery is costing our organisation approximately £277.00. Or £4.62 per minute. So a half hour opening exercise comes in at £138.
And if it costs £138 it needs to be focussed – not focussed on the ideas of others who have no knowledge of the organisation, but focussed on operational effectiveness, focussed or organisational goals, focussed on delegate needs and focussed on extracting a return on the investment. Effective evaluation.
As effective trainers know, evaluation starts at the planning stage. An evaluation of the needs of the attendees and the organisation. Once a Training Needs Analysis of some sort has been undertaken, planning, validation, delivery and further evaluation follow. This evaluation can show the organisational and operational improvements that have been achieved as a result of the training. Very satisfying, and likely to lead to the increased credibility of the trainers and L&D function.
Training people effectively is costly. Training people ineffectively is even more costly as we reduce (or fail to get any) the return on the investment.
Or have I got it all wrong?
Paul
Tags: cost effectiveness, evaluation, focus, measurement, ROI