Training Consultants - The complexity of locating, hiring, and managing a team of qualified training consultants, especially on short notice and with a need to cover multiple locations, can be daunting.
If any of the following scenarios seem familiar, then you are probably also wrestling with the associated stresses of coordinating large-scale training programs:
- Post merger or acquisition integration
- Upgrading or implementing new technology
- Expanding operations or opening a new location
- Entering the process of complying with new regulations and laws
While you are struggling to keep up with these growing educational needs, you also may be wondering how training relates to your strategic business goals, or how you can link training costs to bottom-line return?
Increasingly, businesses are turning to outsourcing their organizational training and development needs to qualified training consultants. Outsourcing entails an arrangement whereby selected services are provided by an external training consulting firm, offering access to skilled expertise, a manageable and variable cost structure and opportunities for increased focus on an organization’s core business. ROI on investments in training is infamously difficult to measure. However, employees see training as an example of their organization investing in them. This causes them to be more engaged and therefore overall performance exponentially increases.
It makes better business sense to build your infrastructure by leveraging companies that have expertise in the business processes you need. Businesses keep control of the training function, but gain a strategic partner that can address key needs at a reasonable cost.
Benefits of Outsourcing Training Consultants
The corporate training function is championed by the organizations learning leader, training manager, or even the human resource manager. As training and development needs fluctuate with project schedules, this individual is constantly evaluating the availability of internal resources to determine what support is required to satisfy objectives. They must respond quickly to change while providing timely education to employees on the latest developments affecting their organizations.
In many cases, outsourcing certain needs to training consultants offers a way to augment, as well as maximize, internal resources to achieve business goals with flexibility in cost and time.
Some of the benefits include:
Reduced Costs
• With outsourcing, training becomes a variable cost rather than a fixed cost, as training personnel are brought in as needed. While costs per hour are higher, there’s maximum efficiency with little or no downtime. Increased training costs become closely aligned with increased revenues during periods of business growth. Additionally, companies have the ability to vary service levels with customer demand, allowing for scalability.
Expertise
• Training consultants come experienced in multiple areas, allowing them to use their expertise to deliver exactly what the company requires. They can add value to on-site training initiatives by providing subject matter expertise, state-of-the-art instructional design, and training project management. This will allow for internal personnel to focus on their core responsibilities, rather than spending time attempting to gain expertise in areas outside their comfort zone. Training consultants can provide objective advice to internal training departments and offer an alternative business perspective. Additionally, training consultants can provide objective advice to internal training departments and offer an alternative business perspective.
Internal Focus
• Training consultants are proficient in providing specialized classroom training with world-class solutions. As external expertise focus on their area of expertise, internal staff can focus on servicing your customers and improving your product and services, not spending time attempting to gain expertise in areas outside their comfort zone. As a result, training goals become closely aligned with the larger goals of the company.
Targeted Implementation
• Finding and contracting with professional trainers at the right place and time can be a challenge. A collaborative relationship between external vendors and internal training personnel delivers successful, just-in-time training programs. Programs are implemented quickly and consistently to meet company objectives on a higher scale.
Access to World-Class Solutions
• Through outsourcing imperative training tasks to qualified training consultants, companies can leverage the unsurpassed processes, systems and solutions with a smaller investment than creating, maintaining and continuously improving the particular business process in house.
A Successful Partnership
• Outsourcing creates a successful partnership that builds an in-depth understanding of an organization’s business, culture, and dynamics. The training needs of the organization are fulfilled, with an understanding of the business objectives and the best ways to direct the organization toward its goals—through the development of its employees.
For the training or HR manager, outsourcing to training consultants offers a way to augment, as well as maximize, internal resources to achieve business goals with flexibility in cost and time.
Projects can be developed without a long lead time, and can be linked for consistency and continuity. Training and HR managers can focus more on core management responsibilities and build on training and development initiatives that link to an organization’s goals.