Grow Your Learning Consultant Team without Hiring New Employees
Today's business environment calls for employers of all sizes to remain flexible. Among other things, this means the ability to increase or decrease the number of team members quickly and efficiently.
According to TrainingIndustry.com, scalability refers to an organization’s ability to handle a large increase or decrease in users, workload or transactions without undue stress. Many companies are able to enjoy the flexibility inherent in the scalability of engaging contract learning consultants. This is especially true for functional areas, such as learning, training and development, which often operate in a project-based environment and may be structured as a separate cost- or profit-center.
A major reason companies turn to contract learning consultants is due to the ability to quickly acquire and disengage qualified contract trainers without stress. In other words, it is easier to turn the switch on and off for a contract resource than a full-time employee.
Flexibility and scalability also mean handling business challenges effectively even when internal expertise is unavailable. For example, there are significant learning requirements associated with post-merger or acquisition integration, implementing new or upgrading technology, launching a compliance program, new strategy initiative, expanding operations and rolling out new human resources or cultural change initiatives. Since these types of challenges are not everyday occurrences, internal training design and delivery teams may not have the expertise or capacity to rapidly respond and deliver the necessary training. In these cases, hiring a contract learning consultant is a good solution. Learn more about the value handling a merger or acquisition with a qualified a contract trainer.
The value of using contract learning consultants over existing full-time employees to deliver training initiatives can be determined in part by determining the following.
Expense
If you are hiring learning consultants on a project-by-project basis, taking on contract talent becomes a variable expense instead of a fixed payroll cost. With this in mind, you are then able to fully concentrate on the specific expertise and the time needed for a given project. This allows you to focus in on the expense that is directly associated with the training initiative. Additionally, you avoid the added expense of benefits and administration costs associated with hiring full-time employees.
Focus
Because contract learning consultants are hired according to their areas of expertise for specific projects, they can be productive immediately. This convenience will allow employees currently on your payroll to stay dedicated to their own tasks rather than having to take on additional training tasks with their workload. This not only allows for full-time employees to focus on their core competencies, but it avoids the heightened levels of stress associated with increased peripheral responsibilities onto employees. As stated on Academia.edu, stress results in high portion of absence ...the ratio of stress in organizations are increasing at an alarming rate, which affects both the employees performance and goal achievement.
Fresh Input
Engagement of a contract learning consultant will bring in an outsider’s perspective and life to your team. By bringing a fresh set of external viewpoints and perspectives, team members are better equipped to brainstorm more efficient methodologies and create better products. Contract learning consultants remove the limitations of in-house skill sets and background knowledge because these qualified individual bring with them a new range of experiences.
Hiring contract learning consultants is not always appropriate for every company in every case. However, when success is determined by an organizations ability to be flexible, scalable and quick during the execution of an enterprise-wide initiative, hiring contract learning consultants are not only preferred but should be considered a strategic asset.