How can corporate training be more effective?

Training. It can be viewed as vitally necessary, a waste of budget, and everything in between. In this era of cost cutting and the mad scramble for profitability, how can companies be more strategic in their approach?

Before costs or any other factor can be considered, I would ask what the employees look like on the other side of the training. What new benefit are they bringing to the company? What skills do they have now that they didn't have before, and how will that make the company more efficient (or profitable or whatever other goal the company had in mind). Are the employees going to need on-going monitoring and assistance? Does the training require company-specific longevity and expertise?

Most companies either use full time in-house trainers or freelance consultants. Both have merit, however this isn't just a bottom-line issue. Training should always be viewed as a source of revenue for the company. If the training won't significantly improve the employee's bottom line to the company, skip it. One of the worst things a company can discover is that it spent time, money and effort making sure its employees are absolutely world-class at a skill set they didn't need at all.

A few ideas to leverage your training department:

1) Do intra-team (or departmental training). Do you have a small number of employees with a great skill set you want to replicate? Do a brown bag lunch/panel discussion on best practices.

2) If you have a large number of people to deploy information to, give it to them with a virtual presentation. It's particularly helpful if you have the ability to archive it for later reuse and replay.

3) Ask the employees where they feel weakest. Companies that view training as a cost center vs. a profit center may be delivering the wrong programs, not be able to see the benefits from them and assume they're not working.

4) Ask management for feedback. What skills do they want their employees to have? Viral training can also be effective as a cost-cutting tool - train a select group of employees who can then deliver the training to their teams.

Training is extremely valuable and if done correctly, can reduce the need for external recruits vs. internal promotions, raise morale as employees are given the opportunity to grow in their skills sets and generate more revenue than it cost through a general improvement in efficiency, technology, revenue generation or any of a number of objectives.