Training Budgets Adjust Due to the Economy

An online survey conducted by ASTD asked people what changes have been implemented within their companies’ training departments to weather today’s turbulent economy. What have you seen in your company, and how does that compare to what these statistics show?

• 49.7% reduced travel of learners for training
• 42.5% reduced travel of instructors for training
• 27.5% moved instructor-led courses to e-learning or web-based courses
• 17.4% made no adjustments
• 16.2% moved training in-house (instead of off-site)
  
• Creation of new content – 15.6% reduced
• Reuse of existing programs or courses – 15.6% increased
• Training dollars per employee – 20.4% reduced; 0.6% increased
• Expenditures for external services – 33.5% reduced; 1.2% increased
• Training budgets for the remainder of the year – 34.5% reduced; 2.4% increased
• Training hours per employee – 13.2% reduced; 4.8% increased
• Tuition reimbursement – 6.0% reduced; 1.8% increased

Need-to-Know Training

Everyone feels pinched these days, with most organizations cutting way back on training expenditures. Many companies seek newer, cheaper ways to deliver necessary training, with an emphasis on necessary. (Training topics considered “unnecessary” can include communications, interpersonal skills, negotiating, and general finance.) Some companies require a minimum number of participants in each class, others have limited the frequency of training events, and others are eliminating those non-essential topics.

On the other hand, companies must not lose sight of the fact that some training is essential. This includes training that is mandated by law or compliance requirements, training that impacts the customer or brand, courses that are safety-related or government regulated, and those that may mitigate risk.

Here is an example. More discrimination claims are filed during poor economic times. It is important for organizations to be able to provide proof of training on such topics as ethics, harassment, discrimination, and wage and hour compliance. Such proof will provide crucial defense in the event of litigation. It is important to spend money as wisely as possible and determine what is essential to your company’s survival – what courses are truly need-to-know vs. nice-to-know.

HR Magazine provides the following ideas for cutting back creatively:

• Cut travel costs – use e-learning, videoconferences
• Piggyback training – provide a class on the same day as a regional meeting
• Increase classroom fill rates – run fewer and larger classes
• Shift schedules – provide training during breaks, lunches, before/after hours
• Eliminate catering – have brown-bag lunch sessions
• Maximize employee knowledge – via mentoring, coaching, shadowing
• Develop a wiki database – create an open-source (free) database/knowledgebase for employees
• Put training online – convert existing classroom courses to e-learning
• Implement free communication tools – such as Skype, Moodle
• Encourage free courses provided by top universities (MIT, UC Berkeley), free downloadable podcasts of business lectures (Stanford U), free software training courses (Microsoft, Free-Ed.net)

Keep an open mind and you will be able to find even more ways to save money while still providing the training your organization needs to succeed during these tough times.

WHAT Do You Do For a Living?

1. Good instructional design helps learners make sense of new information being taught. Training should never be just a dump of information.
2. To make sure learners understand what they need to learn, good instructional design provides clear learning goals. This ensures that learners will not focus on the wrong things and will focus on the appropriate specific pieces of information they need to learn.
3. By including examples, practices, exercises, and discussions (interactivity) throughout the training, good instructional design provides the context and perspective (real meaning) learners need in order to understand and process (remember) new information.
4. Using information from the subject matter expert(s) and compressing it into a streamlined course saves learners a lot of time (and saves companies a lot of money).
5. By designing and developing engaging learning experiences, good instructional design better engages learners and provides more effective learning.

Make e-Learning Engaging - Please!

1. Participants must believe the e-learning will be useful to them.
2. If value for the participants is not obvious, provide a vivid example to make it obvious.
3. The program must provide opportunities for success, never failure or uncertainty.
4. Make the program real to participants by, for example, anchoring the topic to something familiar to them.
5. Since participant involvement will be required, demonstrate what that participation might look like.
6. Make the program active and thought-provoking - keep participants doing and thinking.
7. Make it human by including stories, lessons learned, quotes, anecdotal trivia, etc.
8. Guide and track participants.
9. Blend your e-learning program with other learning tools and opportunities, such as blogs, a performance support tool, an online assessment, online chats with fellow learners, a forum, videos, etc.
10. Use online communities to help participants form relationships, collaborate, and work as a team with others - by using a blog, wiki, discussion board, and other online tools.
11. Make it POP! Add some WOW! This requires creating something dramatic, compelling, and authentic that is still also perceived as valuable to the learner.
12. Measure results and effectiveness, and keep on improving.

Let's Talk Terminology

Finally, more businesses are concentrating on the bottom line and their return on investment (ROI) from their organization's training efforts and expenses. As a result, you will continue to hear more about Performance-Based Learning (PBL), which focuses learners on what they need "to do" to drive business results and delivers learning aligned closely to actual need.