How Do You Keep Training Plans Relevant in a Fast-Changing IT Environment?

Hi all,

I have been associated with the training field for the last 5 years. I am in an IT company and, as a part of my responsibilities, have been working on an effective process of collecting training needs for the organization and have a calendar created. It's not something new to me but was wondering what are the different ways you guys plan it. Do you think collecting the needs and creating a yearly calendar makes sense or does a quarterly calendar do the job better?

I have observed that the technical skills are very dynamic and the needs change pretty quickly, so trainings planned beforehand have a chance of getting redundant pretty quickly. So the yearly calendar does tend to go for a toss. Would love to hear from you in terms of the techniques you use to maintain the calendar.

Training calendars work well for recurrent items, such as induction training, safety training and customer service training where there is high turnover. For all other cases, I feel that training calendars can be a waste of resources. This is for two reasons. 1. Often they are a result of collecting training *wants* instead of training *needs*. 2. Organizations are very dynamic and what was a training need today may not be next month.

I prefer to take two-fold approach:

1. Prioritize and fund improvement projects (with a training component). Possible projects can be determined by consulting company strategic and operational plans, attending management team meetings and meeting with managers individually and in groups. In an IT company, possible projects could be “reducing software defects” and “improving project delivery scores”.

2. Identify training needs from individual employee performance appriaisals and development plans. This would be done by that person's manager and actioned by them.

I then create a two part training budget. One part funds the improvement projects whilst the other funds the individual needs. The split could be 70/30 or 50/50, depending on organizational priorities. If you want to design and fund a calendar, then the budget would have three parts.

In the past, I found this worked very well as it tied training to real organizational needs. I'm keen to hear other people's experiences.

Les Allan

Author: From Training to Enhanced Workplace Performance

http://www.businessperform.com

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your response. I agree with you completely on the above points.

The methodology I follow is pretty similar; I collect the needs from the EDPs attending lead/manager meetings, etc.

One issue that I have faced is that when it comes to EDPs, a lot of managers themselves are not too sure of what they want to do, so they end up putting training courses that may or may not be needed but are high on popularity. It sometimes seems like a case of "follow the leader" approach without logic.

Also, there are some training courses which have very few nominations. Logistically and financially, it can be an issue, but that's at a later stage.

I have found that sitting with the managers after they have filled these needs and sorting out the training/not training issues also helps trim the calendar.

I really like the fund improvement project part that you have mentioned. This is something that is in line with the business and adds value, inline with the strategic HR model that the industry seems to be moving towards.

However, these projects need buy-in from the heads and a methodology of building a process around the entire thing, which can be a nightmare. This case is there especially when the higher authorities want to drive everything themselves (be it for visibility reasons or because they might not have a grassroots level understanding).

What are your thoughts on this? How would it be possible to get a process implemented and followed in such cases?

I hope I am not deviating too much but would love to hear from your experiences.

Just a couple of comments.

“Also, there are some training courses which have very few nominations .”

These are a prime candidate for outsourcing. If three people need Advanced Excel, find a good external provider and book them in.

On funding improvement projects, this is a completely different approach from just doing individual appraisals and needs to be led by the management team. If the training department tries to identify, plan and fund improvement projects, it gets to be what Tom Peters called “revolution by the training department” and just doesn't work.

The management team needs to be skilled in strategic planning, operations planning, budgeting and process improvement. If they aren't, then I'm at that stage in life where I leave running the business to them. If they are, then as a training manager, I pick up the planning documents, meet with the management team and take it from there to forge a training budget and training plan.

Trying to go it alone or prodding the management team into action is a recipe for disaster as in the long run you won't have the buy-in to make it a success. If all you have is EDPs, then all you have is EDPs.

Les Allan

Author: From Training to Enhanced Workplace Performance

http://www.businessperform.com