How To Get Management Support For Training?

I've been involved in training for many years and have always found that Training and Development (T&D) is not considered significant in the company. Most organizations do not put much focus on T&D. Do you have any ideas on how to emphasize the importance of T&D and gain management support?

Dear Christina,

I had given a reply on a similar subject earlier on another forum. Let me reiterate it now.

Please measure the performance of various departments on quality, quantity, delivery, consistency, customer satisfaction, etc. After measurement, identify the operational losses. Convert these losses into revenue losses. This makes a case for staff training.

It would be helpful if you could specify whether you are from the manufacturing or service industry. In any case, here are a few examples to garner support from top management:

a) Increase in inventory turnover ratio.

b) What is the scrap ratio? By what percentage can you decrease it?

c) What is your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)? By what percentage can you improve it?

d) How many employees are employed per machine or what volume of work is done per employee? What is the benchmark in your industry? What steps can you take to increase it?

Please remember, merely training your staff on hard skills or functional skills will not suffice. Soft skills should also be developed. To make soft skills training effective, consider conducting organization-wide surveys on communication culture, interpersonal environment, etc. These surveys will guide your training efforts.

All the best!

Dinesh Divekar
+91-9900155394

Well, top-level management is essentially judged on their ability to either increase revenues or decrease costs. Thus, any training will garner respect only if it leads to an increase in revenues or a decrease in costs. As long as that doesn't happen, training will just be treated as a nice-sounding but useless burden to be tolerated at most.

A smart HR professional would:

a) assess any training to determine whether it will actually lead to reduced costs or increased revenues, or if it is simply a nice idea, and

b) pitch the training as a cost-reducing/revenue-increasing investment.

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