The customized-training option

Targeted training substantially benefits your bottom line. A study by the American Society of Training and Development shows firms that invest in employee training earn 24 percent higher gross profit margins. Research indicates a better skilled workforce means fewer machine breakdowns, lower maintenance costs, better quality, lower staff turnover, less need for supervision, reduced downtime, increased productivity and more.

The most common reasons to train employees include:

* increasing worker productivity;

* saving money;

* leveraging management's time;

* creating a less stressful workplace;

* making happier workers and;

* growing customer satisfaction.

OK, so you are going to train your employees. What are your options? In any community, there are colleges, universities, agencies, temporary placement firms and national traveling vendors, along with online providers offering an array of public programs.

How is targeted training different from public classes and why should you consider this when looking at training an existing work team or new employee? Customized training can take almost limitless forms. It may adapt an existing public class and deliver it with slightly adjusted content in a different time, location or format for your group. Or, a curriculum could be designed explicitly for your company using very specific and sometimes proprietary company processes, procedures, examples, tools, etc.

Targeted training can infuse your company vision, culture, traditions and values to promote a sense of corporate citizenship. It can also tie outcomes to competencies that the company has identified as critical for its long-term success. These competencies may be the same across the industry or be specific to one group.

Targeted training, which is growing in popularity among private and public entities, offers distinct advantages. The instructional schedule maximizes convenience with dates, times and locations that work best for your company. When education is delivered at the company site, staff spend less time away from work and travel expenses are eliminated.

Customized classes provide an opportunity for your group to brainstorm and interact using real company scenarios. It helps build a cohesive team by including all employees, different experiences and skill sets to the course. Employees learn key concepts and applications as a team.

As with any education, determining the reason for training is critical. Is it to affect behavioral change, introduce new products/services, improve a skills set, comply with a mandate, grow your talent pool or address an underlying issue? Once the reasons are determined, then you must define the desired outcome.

Assessment is key to efficiently using your training dollar. There are numerous methods to ensure your training is effective. You can meet with the trainer/facilitator to discuss a plan. You may decide to use pre-training surveys, focus groups or even job shadowing. Job shadowing allows the consultant to observe processes/tools/equipment with minimal interruption to your workforce and glean insight into the grass root culture of your business.

Dave Stein of ES Research Group offers a cautionary note to any company that goes to the extreme in customizing materials within their own business environment. Stein warns that these can replicate existing flawed practices thus negating the training to effect behavioral change. To avoid this, the facilitator must control the core content to help employees shift from business as usual while tailoring content and materials to reflect the company's specifics without making modifications resulting in no change. Effective tailoring results in a more personalized experience by using relevant procedures, tools, equipment and best practices supporting the training objective.

What does training success look like? Do you have measurements for benchmarking success? When customized training is paired with an assessment or evaluation of current skill levels, content can be truly learner-focused by bridging the gap from the current state to the desired state where key learning outcomes can be measured.

Tangible outcomes are ones that reduce errors, enhance abilities to operate a piece of equipment, increase production, build your repeat customer base and so on.

Not all the benefits of training are quantifiable; many are intangible, such as improved employee self-esteem and morale. When training addresses "soft" areas, sometimes a correlation can be made. Conflict resolution reduces the number of customer complaints and employee absenteeism, while improving the workplace atmosphere. A time management workshop can improve productivity and reduce missed deadlines.

There are several resources for calculating your return-on-training investment. The American Society for Training and Development helps managers deliver such numbers. However, it's worth noting that calculating training's value can be time consuming. It may only be worthwhile when the program has a long shelf life, may be repeated for many participants, if the monetary investment is considered sizeable or when you measure before and after performance indicators. Dun and Bradstreet stress training as a human resources investment rather than as an expense. They further state, "In today's fast-paced economy, if a business isn't learning, it's going to fall behind. A business learns as its people learn."

Customized training costs are similar to dining from a restaurant's ala carte menu. How many pieces you add (are you having a soup, salad, entree and dessert or just a cup of coffee?) correlate with the cost of instruction, as well as the number of employees being trained, course location, subject matter and instructional materials needed. Tailored training can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $4,500 a day depending on which ala carte menu you select. You may be able to further streamline instruction costs by blending online and face-to-face instruction.

Your company benefits by helping your employees develop well-rounded skills. You'll build a motivated and committed team to help your company adapt to changes in the marketplace. So, in your upcoming employee development plans, don't overlook the value that targeted training provides.

For decades, TMCC has assisted area business in securing the training they need when they need it. Instruction held at TMCC, your company or online is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Deb O'Gorman is director for customized training in the TMCC Workforce Development and Continuing Education Division.