Bringing in a corporate training partner rather than trying to do everything in-house can offer several positive returns. Here are some of the benefits of outsourced training.
1. Improved organisational efficiency
- Hiring an outside training provider allows your organisation to focus on its core competencies.
- Experienced training providers can help you align training initiatives with key business objectives, ensuring that all your training efforts support larger company goals.
- Ideally, a training partner will also help you implement post-training follow-up courses and refreshers. These can help you maximise learning ROI and better assess training’s impact on your company’s operations, culture, and so on.
2. Better control of training costs
- If you organise training programmes internally, you will be responsible for both the training activities (content development, delivery, logistics, post-training follow-up, etc.) and other – often unseen – training costs. A significant amount of company time and resources may be poured into these programmes. An external training provider can help identify and reduce these unseen costs. This creates maximum value for your training spend and, ultimately, frees up funds for additional training activities.
- Training providers regularly invest in tools and processes to drive further efficiencies.
3. Access to expertise
- This benefit is particularly important to companies that don’t have a deep bench of subject matter experts or access to advanced technologies. When cultivated correctly, an outsourced training provider who is a true partner can help develop new training paths for your organisation and further align training spend with business requirements.
- Hiring an expert to lead a training initiative can also ensure a higher level of learning consistency across the enterprise. Your employees will benefit from exposure to proven training techniques and are likely to learn the skills they need in a more efficient and effective manner. The faster your people learn new skills, the faster they can apply them to the business, and this can give you a competitive advantage.
While the benefits of outsourced training are plentiful, it is also important to remember that outsourcing training is not the same as outsourcing other functions in a company. It requires careful examination of your training needs – for example, through a gap analysis – and a clear understanding of what you are looking for in a training partner.
Do you want to develop your people – both for their own benefit and to drive organisational change and improvement? For advice on providing an effective but affordable training programme, email me or call me on 020 7099 2621.