Many organisations have decreased their annual training budget in the recession period which can be very harmful for the organisation and the economy as a whole. But instead of cutting the training budget the organisations should implement new ways to minimise the training budget. A survey conducted by the CIPD shows that the average annual amount spent per employee has dropped from £300 to £220.
1. Focus should be laid upon the training needs of the organisation. The training should be beneficial in terms of business generation, sales skills and business critical issues.
2. Firstly analyse and research into what type of training is required for the staff to improve their skills, abilities and over all performance. Online assessment tests can be used to assess whether training is required or not.
3. To keep costs down, use your in-house learning and development team and e-learning techniques together. If they co-ordinate well, they can be helpful in designing a very cost effective training system. The in-house learning and development team can come up with beneficial e-learning techniques and ideas. Therefore their ideas should be taken into account while designing the training procedure.
4. The employer should encourage the employees to engage themselves in informal group discussion or informal knowledge sharing. This can be done via popular social networking sites, like Facebook, Orkut or LinkedIn or through a network within the intranet. Employees find it enjoyable and relaxing.
5. An organisation can reduce training costs by letting people learn about the organisation through the Internet. People should know what your organisation is about and what processes are involved before the training is started. This way, they feel more engaged in your organisation and the training burden is reduced as well.
6. Instead of designing and creating a new course of training from the start, use the e-learning method and use the previously used PowerPoint slides, posters, brochures etc. Try to maximise the existing training channels instead of starting from scratch.
7. Instead of completely erasing the classroom-training environment to cut training costs, try to minimise the classroom-training course length. Because if classroom training is completely erased then you may risk your organisation. Key learning factors and elements of the training can be transformed into an online archive.
8. The organisation can encourage the staff to learn and get training at home through the Internet. In return the employer can offer to give a broadband bill throughout the training period. This is beneficial, as it does not disrupt the working environment of the office since the people are trained at home and at the same time the training can be tracked online.
9. The most important thing to analyse is who needs the training most and why, before starting any procedure.
10. A blended approach should be applied in terms of classroom training and online training. If they are used together it can be very beneficial in cost cutting.
11. The employees must be motivated to share informal knowledge and informal learning abilities should be encouraged as well.
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