To determine if investments made on training are able to deliver significant Return on Investment (ROI) for the organisation, it is a must to evaluate the outsourced training programme.
Training and development plays an important role in the achievement of organisational objectives, as many studies have shown that it is strongly related to employee loyalty, improved employee performance and overall customer satisfaction.
While costs of training can be easily computed, the costs of not training are almost always overlooked by most organisations that believe training their people will just be an unnecessary burden for them.
What these organisations do not know is that training actually improves employee retention. Research has shown that more than 40% of employees planned to leave the organisation they worked for because they offer either poor or no training at all.
Contrastingly, only 12% of employees of companies that provide excellent employee training declared any plans to stop their employment.
Another study revealed that employees who are untrained are able to finish certain tasks longer than they would usually take if they were trained.
Given all these advantages, more and more organisations have now taken a second look at their training and development programmes with a view of taking a serious consideration of its importance.
Outsourcing a training programme has become one of the emerging trends for many organisations today. Outsourcing, generally, is the act of subcontracting a process to a third-party organisation.
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This means that instead of hiring people that the organisation will pay regularly to train their internal customers or employees, they would just hire the services of an outsider that has gained much expertise in training people.
Many organisations have opted to use outsourcing so as to maximise results as well as to yield higher ROIs.
Moreover, through outsourcing, companies are better able to focus or concentrate their resources on their competencies or the things that they do best.
With outsourced training programmes, organisations are confident that their employees’ training needs will be effectively addressed by the outsourced training consultants that have gained expertise in their field.
It is also believed that outsourced trainers are also more up-to-date with the latest trends in technology compared to inhouse trainers, as the former have more exposure to different companies than the latter.
Employees can benefit from this advantage, as outsourced trainers more often than not include this in their training curriculum.
Likewise, since most outsourced trainings are done offsite, employees would be able to focus more, as they will not be distracted by the daily demands of their jobs.
Nevertheless, outsourcing training comes with its own disadvantages. For one, the services of outsourced trainers and consultants can be very pricey.
They can also be time-consuming for they are more often than not done offsite, which require employees to travel.
Moreover, the content of training programmes may be too general and might not be customised to an individual organisational culture.
Amidst all the pros and cons cited, it is imperative that the organisation should evaluate the outsourced training programme and determine if it would be appropriate to continue investing on it.
It is also prudent for the internal training and development department to evaluate the outsourced training programme so that the organisation will know that the training objectives are met and that training costs incurred are worth it.
I conclude this week’s article with a quote from one of my fellow training and development practitioner which goes:
Whether training and development or lack of it there is return on investment in either case. If you do not invest in training and development you are investing in ignorance.
There is nothing as destructive as an ignorant workforce and the destruction is innocent because they don’t know better ways to perform duties, Munyaradzi Mungaraza.
Paul Nyausaru is training and development practitioner. Views contained in this article are personal. You can contact him on email [email protected] [email protected]
