Worker Training Still Needed Despite Corporate Trimming
Entrepreneur’s Notebook
by Lois P. Frankel
When corporate budgets are tightened, training and development takes a hit after all, it’s an expendable “luxury.” Or is it?
The irony is that downsizing organizations need talented and effective employees more than ever. If a company really wants to do more with less, it has to spend energy and resources to ensure that productivity remains high, employees are as versatile as possible, and managers are given the tools needed to lead an anxious and demoralized workforce. Training and development plans are of significant value to individual employees and can help your company retain valuable personnel. While training and development may not ensure employment for life, it does contribute to a lifetime of employability.
But in these times of ever-shrinking budgets, training and development programs must be cost-effective. Here are suggestions for keeping training and development costs down and even getting free training and development services.
– Identify community resources. There are local therapists, financial planners or other subject matter experts throughout the community who would love the opportunity to speak before a group of employed professionals. You don’t have to pay these people the quid pro quo is the knowledge that some people in the audience may later call them for service.
In other words, it’s free advertising. Use these people as guest speakers to develop a noontime series on subjects of interest to your staff. For example, have a therapist discuss how to manage office conflict, or have a financial planner give a presentation on preparing for retirement. The caveat is to clearly communicate to the speaker that there can be no “selling” from the platform.
– Tap vendors. Don’t be embarrassed to contact your biggest vendors and ask each of them to provide you with some training-related service that you can share with your staff. Even if it’s only free advice that you ask for, you get the benefit of their expertise and they know you’ll remember them when the business picture changes.
– Negotiate. Any consulting firm that tells you business is just as good today as it was a year ago is blowing smoke. Companies are much more aware of and careful about how their consulting budgets are being spent. As a result, there isn’t enough work for the majority of consulting firms. Don’t expect to get a three-day team-building program for half price you’ll only insult the consultant and damage what may have been a mutually beneficial relationship. However, you can talk about your limited resources and ask the firm to work with you to develop a program or design a project that fits your budget.
Remember the old maxim about teaching a person to fish so they can eat for a lifetime? When hiring outside consultants, make their employment contingent upon sharing their expertise with your training and development staff.
Ask that your own employees be used as co-facilitators so they can learn the program content. Similarly, keep in mind that you’ve paid for the materials they use. Discuss in advance your right to use these same materials in future programs that are facilitated by internal staff. This saves considerable research and development time.
Again, the primary concern of a consultant is exposure and repeat business, so offer to put his or her name (or the name of the consulting firm) on every page you use. Most good consultants won’t have a problem sharing knowledge and materials because their egos tell them no one can do the work as well as they can.
– “Shadowing” consultants. Not all training and development is done in a workshop or class. There are conflict resolution interventions, organizational development discussions, retreats, and coaching sessions. Another way of developing your internal consulting staff is to have them participate in the meetings outside consultants have with your management team.
Here again is a way to get more for your money by developing internal expertise that can be used throughout your organization. It would be shortsighted of the vendor to balk at this arrangement since your internal staff know their limitations and will often prefer not to do the work of the outside consultant.
– Local graduate programs. Contact a university with an organization development department within the school of business or psychology and ask the dean if he or she will take a “real time” project for students. For example, you may be considering a reorganization in which you would typically use outside consultants. This could be a case study for a team of graduate students.
– Hold staff accountable. One of the biggest mistakes employers make is to throw money into training and development plans, but then not hold people accountable for their learning. When you send someone to a training program, instruct them to prepare a brief presentation on what they learned and how it can be applied to the current work situation, and then have them deliver the information to other members of their team. Similarly, sit down with staff members after they’ve participated in any kind of development activity and discuss the lessons learned and how the company will benefit from the investment.
– Develop a learning library. It doesn’t have to be complicated or take up a lot of space. Find a small area where you can keep books, videotapes, audiotapes, magazines, and articles for employees to check out. If you write to some authors, they’ll even donate copies of their books to your library.
– Performance management system. Some employees take classes just to spend the day out of the office. Managers know this and sometimes collude with the employee by thinking of the class as a “perk.” This is a waste of money for the company. If you want to make the most of your training budget, allow staff members to take only programs that tie into their performance development plans.
– Internal experts. There is probably a wealth of talent and information within your organization that you can use to help train and develop your employees. Identify talented individuals and convey the message “each one teach one.” It can be as informal as buddying up rookies with seasoned veterans or can take the form of more formal programs where employees actually teach training programs in their areas of expertise. By developing these internal training systems, you not only increase knowledge throughout the company, you also build a spirit of cooperative teamwork.
Choosing just two or three of these suggestions will convey the critical message to your workforce that you haven’t forgotten the importance of people and teams.
Lois Frankel is president of Corporate Coaching International, a Pasadena consulting firm. She can be reached at
[email protected].
