Dear Manish,
When you say "external programmes", you mean to say Public Workshops. Public workshops are organised by some training companies. These companies do the marketing of the programmes, companies nominate their staffs based on the suitability of the programme. However, there are few limitations of the public workshops. These are as below:
a) Training programmes are aimed to bring organisational change. By nominating couple of staffs, it is not possible to bring organisation-wide change. Take the case of training on Communication Skills. By nominating few staffs for a public workshop on communication skills, will it be possible to bring a culture of communication in the organisation? Impossible! I conduct training on purchase and inventory management subjects also. How it is possible to increase Inventory Turnover Ratio (ITR) by just nominating 1-2 staffs on public workshop on purchase management or inventory management?
b) It requires tremendous motivation on the participants (staffs that companies nominate) to learn, absorb the knowledge, find out suitability of applying that knowledge and really apply. I have been conducted public workshops since 2008. Believe me, not even 1% participants are that much motivated.
c) Exception to (b) above is few technical programmes or taxation related programmes. However, for soft skills learning implementation is far cry. In the last eight years, I have trained 500+ procurement professionals. However, just 1-2 called me to discuss how to implement Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) in their company.
d) For the public workshops, participants come from diverse background. Their expectations are different. Therefore, exact customisation of the training is not possible.
e) Further to point (b) above, many times participants attend the programme to unwind from routine hustle bustle of their work. Learning is secondary for them.
f) Few participants attend training at outstation because of their vested interest. The real purpose is to meet some relative or friend, attend interview, buy property etc. However, this is cleverly camouflaged under "training".
By the way, why are you coming to gauging the learning for the public workshops. How many companies, how many HR/Training managers measure training effectiveness for the in-house training programmes? Who has done that? It would be my pleasure to know that person.
Conducting training requires lot of organisational research. Based on this research, one needs to derive a goal statement in which it is stated in measurable terms what needs to be increased or decreased. Every training programme should be aimed at cost reduction. How many HR/Training Managers know what costs are associated with their business?
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar