Learning and Development

Training needs assessment

A lot of money can be wasted by unfocused training. The provision of training does not always translate into engagement and learning by staff. Most of the time the provision of quality interactive information combined with clear accountabilities and expectations is what is required. Successful businesses plan their development needs and base budget allocation accordingly. Planning performance improvement needs to become part of the business planning process. As a part of this process, managers should identify the performance improvement initiatives, including any development activities required to enable employees to perform and achieve business plans. Managers need to apply the same rigor to planning and evaluating people development as they do with any other form of investment.

We can work with you to conduct effective needs assessment that is based on the ultimate goal of delivering effective service to customers.

Finding and choosing providers

There are many training providers and vendors and it can be difficult to identify who has the best product or service for your business.

We can take the hassle out of finding provider through our expansive network and the use of objective proposal evaluation process that ensure that a robust and qualified solution is delivered.

Training evaluation

In many businesses training costs do not have robust value add assessment. This makes then easy costs to cut in difficult times. Investments of hundreds or even thousands of dollars are subjected to no more scrutiny than a ‘smile sheet’. What other comparative investments or business interventions would be so lightly examined? How many managers assess learning needs on the basis of clear links to business results and service delivery needs; and then measure the value added by the initiative? How many managers set a budget of dollars per head, select a range of programmes that seem to fit perceived needs and file people through programmes and hope that the learning sticks? Hope is not a method and if we want to manage development as part of a growth strategy, then we must manage by fact.

We can work with you to make this happen and we have a range of metrics and evaluation tools that enable you to make qualified decisions about learning and development for yourself and your staff.

Learning without training

The research consistently tells us that lack of skill contributes to less than 20 % of the reasons for poor performance. This means that 80% of the time, training is probably not the answer to a performance problem and that the solution lies elsewhere. It means that most of the time, solutions to improving performance or addressing a learning gap will not be found in a training course and even less likely, a one day $1400 seminar. When we ask people what has been important in their development, they don’t talk about courses they have been on. You will relate to this... It was probably a manager you had or a time when you had to manage some change or act for your boss etc. etc.

We can work with you to replicate these peak experiences for your people and develop the pipeline of activities and challenges that will grow your team.