Saving Money On Training

As someone who’s been involved in the training world for longer than I like to admit, one of the questions that seems to come up in conversation lately is how to save money on axetraining. In most tough economic times, the training department is usually one of the first to feel the knife — there’s an assumption that people can just learn on the job, or that they really don’t need to travel to those expensive seminars.

I’ll hold off on the theoretical discussion of whether or not this is a good idea (hint: NOT!) for right now, and just give you some suggestions on how you can stretch your training dollar a bit further.


Cancel Any Training Not Tied To A Meaningful Assessment
While this is good advice at any time, it’s especially important now. If the class, workshop, seminar or speech doesn’t have a solid assessment component — don’t spend your money on it. (And if you don’t know what “solid assessment component” means, and can’t recite Kirkpatrick’s Levels by heart, stop right now and hire someone who can.)

Cancel Any Training With The Words “Overview”, “Introduction” or “Update” In The Title
Difficult times require that you focus on adding skills and improving performance — and learning that is generalized or unfocused should be the first to go.  (Yes, I’m a big fan of context — I’m an Instructional Designer, after all!) But you can’t sell context to your customers.

Cancel Any Training That Has Not Been Updated In The Last Two Years
If you’re going to cut, take a good hard look at the stuff that is old and stale.  If nobody in your org has been willing to pay to have a course spruced up in two years, that’s a pretty good signal that it isn’t really valued much.  Or, that you have achieved perfection and it shouldn’t be touched.  Pick one.

Cancel Any Training That Has More Than 20 PowerPoint Slides Per Hour Of Learning
That’s not training.  That’s a speech.

Cancel Any Training By An Instructor Who Doesn’t Get Stellar Reviews
You are doing performance reviews of your instructors/facilitators, right?  And it’s not just smile sheets?  Well if they’re not walking on water, it either means they’re not great trainers or it’s not great material — and in either case, it gets the boot.

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That should be a pretty good start — in most of the organizations I’ve worked with, I just cut your training budget between 50 and 70%.  You can mail me the check.

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