Article by , Lead HR Consultant @ Gulf Training and Consultation Center

The process of change is all-inclusive – it leaves no individual, group, or entities unraveled.

Yet, while no one is immune to change itself, there is a sound cyclical relationship between ‘change’ and ‘development’.

As a response to internal and/or external factors that affect us, we are bound to conduct training, thus changing people’s behaviors and competency level; and by doing so we bring ‘change’ and innovation into our organization, as well as the industry we operate in.

There’s an abundance of articles, surveys, and research data that clearly prove the major impact of having Training and Development as a backbone of our operational practice.

In fact, a simple overview will point out major improvements that can benefit enterprises of various sizes once Training and Development best practices are set in motion:

• Improved competency levels of Human Capital, thus bringing change in behavior and competency levels. It improves motivation, aspiration and level of contribution and overall job satisfaction.
• Optimized HC abilities, and an assurance that everyone contributes toward achieving organizational, as well as individual goals.
• Innovation. T&D provides a fresh perspective, innovation, and an opportunity to better restructure your organization for the future. It depletes obsolescence, bottlenecks and low-quality processes.
• Remedies your Culture, boosts productivity and team spirit. It builds trust between people across the board.
• Builds up a better corporate image, as you are an employer that cares for its people and their well-being, beyond just doing-the-job.
• Hones your leadership suit, their motivation, loyalty, and overall behavior. Boosts problem-solving and decision-making process.

Deconstructing the Training vs Development Dichotomy

Corporate professionals are accustomed to encountering both training and development mostly used together as part of a range of activities that focus on improving employee knowledge, performance and productivity.

But a separation between the two is evident:

Training is aimed at helping your HC improve their level of competence – knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform their jobs – as to improve performance in their current roles.

Development, on the other side, is a more inclusive model that focuses on people’s future performance and growth.

The verdict is simple: Both help YOU grow by gaining the knowledge and experience needed to accomplish your vision.

Should I Implement L&D At Any Cost?

Yes. Kind of.

L&D implementation should be either done correctly or not done at all.

After all, there’s nothing more exhausting than an unoptimized L&D project that can turn into a time and money pit due to non-value-adding activities.

What’s the catch?

Doing this the right way requires a vast HC acumen, which might turn out to be quite a lengthy process on its own.

There is an entire science supporting the process of creating Training and Development plans and proper Training Needs Analysis, developing a Competency Framework, and Identifying your Employee Competency level.

Unless you are an HC professional or a Professional Development Institute, it’s best you save yourself the hassle of spending years to acquire basic proficiency in these areas.

A simplified illustration can depict this process as below:

• After having a clear strategy, and objectives for your organization, you need to determine your needs for each role, individual, team, and department, based on your strategic plan and objectives. Then, you conduct proper Training Need Analysis; establish at what competency level is each of your employees; identify the exact gaps into your people’s knowledge, skills abilities and behavior and the desired level you want them to reach.
• Your learning solutions should be aligned with your business objectives. For instance, as your partner, we would assess what you want to achieve but would also examine how exactly any training will improve your business results and affect your bottom line. Your HC seldom evaluates this direct alignment with the overall business objectives or, in many cases, does not have the capacity to do so. Not implementing a strategic plan, might lead to higher turnover of your internal talents, as you’ll lose the needed HC to achieve your strategic plans and objectives.
• You also need to make a proper Training and Development Plan and set specific Budget for this purpose, so you can measure effectiveness and ROI.
• Then, you establish specific Objectives & Goals which need to be achieved, for each person; as well as each training and development opportunity.
• It’s also very important that you select the most appropriate of all Training Methods available.
• You implement the Training and Development Plan.
• Last but not least you Track Progress, and evaluate the output and performance upon completing any training and development endeavor, while you keep monitoring and evaluating performance and ROI.
• Repeat.
• Do not get overwhelmed. You can do this easily by finding a partner, specialized in this domain, to help you run the process smoothly and efficiently & identify the best opportunities.

Are There Any Risks In Not Having Any L&D Plan Whatsoever?

Definitely.

In fact, just like there are countless benefits of having a well-structured learning and development plan, there are quite a few risks in not having any.

One of the major risks is a high turnover rate which can lead to an increased time and money spend that will make training expenses suddenly seem like peanuts.

42% of employees claim development is the most important factor when deciding to join a company and providing development opportunities for talents (especially millennials) would help you retain up to  86% of millennials.

Give Me A Personal Example!

As a professional development institute, we at Gulf Training and Consultation Center have gone through an immensely diverse palette of clients, partners, and organizations.

At some point, we’ve also encountered enterprises that were reluctant to recognize the value that both training and development add to their organization.

This has been particularly prevalent during challenging circumstances of, for instance, economy downshifts, profit declines, or any other similar stimuli that prompted to minimize training budgets.

They have soon come to realize that such decisions backfire in the long run: eventually bringing higher costs, higher turnover due to dissatisfaction, increased recruitment costs, and eventually decrease in their bottom-line.

How To Conduct Training And Development?

The major question organizations are facing today is not whether to conduct Training and Development but how to do it?

Internally or outsource it?

Most organizations simply do not have the internal infrastructure or expertise to meet their diverse training needs. Outsourcing is a long-term competitive strategy, which guarantees lowest cost for the highest quality & scalability of your human capital.

A simple Google research shows a variety of research proving that outsourcing Training and Development to a professional organization can save up to 30% on costs.

Having dedicated, full-time trainers and facilitators can be extremely costly for any organization, where the most obvious (and smallest) costs would be related to their salaries, recruitment, managerial time, procurement and maintenance of relevant technology; and the real, and less obvious, costs are related to the fact that it is utterly difficult (read: impossible) to have under your umbrella the required know-how, and experience to have and deliver the highest-quality training at the lowest cost, fitting for your employees’ needs.

Unless you are willing to sponsor an internal academy, which for smaller organizations is not always financially feasible.

Fortune 500 companies are focused on their core business, introducing products or services to the market and increasing their market share. Learning and Development is not their primary function, and so they are shrewdly partnering up with someone whose is.

Outsourced training makes up 42% of American corporate training budgets. In addition, a survey conducted by Deloitte established that 59% of organizations used outsourcing as a cost-cutting strategy; especially with organizations with a larger volume of employees.

So, instead of having a full-time dedicated team, with outsourcing, you will get the flexibility to scale your HC up and down based on your specific needs and use this expertise only when required.

A professional development institute is fully specialized in training and development and can bring vast experience due to long-lasting collaboration with multiple clients across various industries.

Such organizations not only have the best facilitators, which could organize hundreds of training opportunities within a day, but also, the subject matter experts to deliver knowledge and imbed it into your HC.