Choosing the best in-house training for your team

During a time of economic uncertainty for businesses, every penny counts. That includes every penny you spend on your in-house training. To make sure you’re making the best use of your time, money and resources as well as getting the most from your in-house training, there are a few things you can do to make sure your provider is delivering not just good training, but good economics too.

Is the training relevant?

The quickest way to waste time and money is to invest in training that has no relevance to your current or future business plans. If you have no intention of moving into personal injury litigation, for example, then training that covers this area, whether external or in-house, is irrelevant. But if you think that your business direction lies in personal injury law and it’s part of your long-term strategy, then in-house training will deliver the most cost-effective solution and methods of introducing this field to your team.

Choose wisely – make sure that you’re not seduced by glamorous sales pitches and flashy ‘bells and whistles’ brochures, and that the training you decide upon is relevant to your business.

Is your provider experienced?

In-house training doesn’t just require an intimate knowledge of the subject matter. Because in-house training is often more tailored to an individual business’s requirements compared to external training, the provider has to be more willing to adapt their delivery methods to suit each group they work with. Instead of simply ‘reading off a script’ (which can often be the case with less flexible, external training courses), an in-house provider needs to be able to change their style to suit their audience.

The more experience they have in delivering bespoke training, the more likely they are to be able to deliver the right kind of training for your team. Before you book your training, take a look at their track record and ask for references. Any good in-house training provider will be more than willing to let you talk to previous clients who will give you an honest appraisal of the provider’s abilities.

Do they understand your business?

While a training provider might understand their subject intimately, that training will be wasted if they don’t understand how it relates to your business. Good in-house training providers don’t just understand training, they understand business too. The ability to appreciate their client’s business enables providers to adapt and tailor their training to suit the needs and ambitions of the client – you.

So ask your prospective training provider a few searching questions about your own business. Check that they’ve done their homework properly and that they know what kind of business you actually are. That way you’ll be certain that the training they deliver is relevant and ‘fits’ in with your overall business plan, rather than trying to shoehorn a round training peg into your business’s square skills-set gap.

Finally, how good a teacher is the provider? It may seem like a strange question, but if your training provider is someone that your team is going to have difficulties relating to then this can put up a substantial barrier to a successfully delivered training course. Teaching is a skill that few people possess. If the training provider is a poor teacher, the quality of the training will be poor as well. If their communication skills are good then the training course will be interesting, relevant and ultimately, successful.