<p>Effective management and employment of this asset is even more critical in today’s business climate and highly competitive environment.<br /><br /> In a tough economic climate with unrelenting pressure on training budgets, companies, today, are increasingly demanding reduced time-to-production. <br /><br />Further, training vendors are constantly challenged to demonstrate the value, ROI and business impact of training initiatives. For organisations, the challenge is to keep the skills of human capital updated within reasonable budgets. It is, thus, imperative that when a skill augmentation/update is required, a suitable training vendor is engaged that can deliver Complete Learning Experience (CLE TM) while reducing Total Cost of Learning (TCL TM). <br /><br />Rapid changes<br />The rapid changes in technology landscape, coupled with vast array of technology options available to professionals, are making corporate training requirements increasingly complex and challenging to manage in-house for the Learning & Development Managers. These demands make corporate training a totally different ball game as compared to retail training delivery.<br /><br />The scenario today is different, with an increase in awareness of corporate training in Indian industry, a gradual shift from general to specific approach has been realised. <br /><br />This translates to moving to “tailored” in-house/customised training, as opposed to openhouse/ public training courses. With the high churn rates that IT companies in India are witnessing, training today is considered as a retention tool than a cost, by most managers. <br /><br />Despite the current challenging market, Gartner predicts, that the ongoing need for qualified IT personnel in Asia Pacific will fuel major opportunities for IT training and certification in the region and estimates that around 1.5 million IT experts will be needed by 2012.<br /><br /> Key drivers for this longer term growth include enhancements in collaborative tools and technologies, backed by increasing Internet penetration to deliver online content. Although majority of the employed IT professionals hold relevant “qualifications”, the industry still faces declining numbers of qualified (read: ready to deliver) and skilled manpower.<br /><br />IT spending in India is projected to total $79.8 billion in 2012, a 9.1 per cent increase from 2011 spending of $73.1 billion, according to Gartner Inc. Despite the global economic challenges, enterprises will continue to invest in IT.<br /><br />A corporate training delivery must be process oriented, understanding business drivers behind the training requirement, scoping the delivery content requirements, assigning subject matter expert/industry consultant as a trainer, pre-training assessment, preparing trainees, delivering business specific customised course, post-training assessment and followup/ assistance.<br /><br /> The process must be supplemented with training lifecycle management - planning, management, administration and advisory. This must relieve Learning & Development Managers from the rigour of organising and managing the trainings - they must be focusing on understanding the learning and development needs of the employees; not spending their time and effort in nuances of organising and facilitating a training.<br /><br />Few training vendors offer LPO, and those who do immensely help their clients in addressing the challenges by taking complete ownership of end-to-end learning process right from the inception of the training requirement, thus ensuring a rich and complete learning experience and not just a classroom training. <br /><br />Another important aspect of corporate training is to increase the value and return on training investment by designing a course that is clearly aligned with corporate strategy, in terms of program objectives, solution design and content. <br /><br />By leveraging the business strategy as the framework for people development, corporate training companies can deliver powerful and precise training framework that is directly aligned with key business goals, thus helping the professionals to connect points between training and actual requirements at work. <br /> <br />Given the hectic schedule and frequent travel of professionals, corporate training must be available in multiple modes like in-house, open-house, private, public, instructor-led, online, virtual, which can be consumed by the trainees on schedule as well as when possible. <br /><br />Further, companies expect same level of professionalism from its training providers, that their customers expect of them. If training vendors want to develop a serious long term engagement with their customers, offering “Service Level Agreements” has to be an integral and a standard practice.<br /><br /><em>(The writer is Director of SpringPeople Software Pvt Ltd)</em></p>
<p>Effective management and employment of this asset is even more critical in today’s business climate and highly competitive environment.<br /><br /> In a tough economic climate with unrelenting pressure on training budgets, companies, today, are increasingly demanding reduced time-to-production. <br /><br />Further, training vendors are constantly challenged to demonstrate the value, ROI and business impact of training initiatives. For organisations, the challenge is to keep the skills of human capital updated within reasonable budgets. It is, thus, imperative that when a skill augmentation/update is required, a suitable training vendor is engaged that can deliver Complete Learning Experience (CLE TM) while reducing Total Cost of Learning (TCL TM). <br /><br />Rapid changes<br />The rapid changes in technology landscape, coupled with vast array of technology options available to professionals, are making corporate training requirements increasingly complex and challenging to manage in-house for the Learning & Development Managers. These demands make corporate training a totally different ball game as compared to retail training delivery.<br /><br />The scenario today is different, with an increase in awareness of corporate training in Indian industry, a gradual shift from general to specific approach has been realised. <br /><br />This translates to moving to “tailored” in-house/customised training, as opposed to openhouse/ public training courses. With the high churn rates that IT companies in India are witnessing, training today is considered as a retention tool than a cost, by most managers. <br /><br />Despite the current challenging market, Gartner predicts, that the ongoing need for qualified IT personnel in Asia Pacific will fuel major opportunities for IT training and certification in the region and estimates that around 1.5 million IT experts will be needed by 2012.<br /><br /> Key drivers for this longer term growth include enhancements in collaborative tools and technologies, backed by increasing Internet penetration to deliver online content. Although majority of the employed IT professionals hold relevant “qualifications”, the industry still faces declining numbers of qualified (read: ready to deliver) and skilled manpower.<br /><br />IT spending in India is projected to total $79.8 billion in 2012, a 9.1 per cent increase from 2011 spending of $73.1 billion, according to Gartner Inc. Despite the global economic challenges, enterprises will continue to invest in IT.<br /><br />A corporate training delivery must be process oriented, understanding business drivers behind the training requirement, scoping the delivery content requirements, assigning subject matter expert/industry consultant as a trainer, pre-training assessment, preparing trainees, delivering business specific customised course, post-training assessment and followup/ assistance.<br /><br /> The process must be supplemented with training lifecycle management - planning, management, administration and advisory. This must relieve Learning & Development Managers from the rigour of organising and managing the trainings - they must be focusing on understanding the learning and development needs of the employees; not spending their time and effort in nuances of organising and facilitating a training.<br /><br />Few training vendors offer LPO, and those who do immensely help their clients in addressing the challenges by taking complete ownership of end-to-end learning process right from the inception of the training requirement, thus ensuring a rich and complete learning experience and not just a classroom training. <br /><br />Another important aspect of corporate training is to increase the value and return on training investment by designing a course that is clearly aligned with corporate strategy, in terms of program objectives, solution design and content. <br /><br />By leveraging the business strategy as the framework for people development, corporate training companies can deliver powerful and precise training framework that is directly aligned with key business goals, thus helping the professionals to connect points between training and actual requirements at work. <br /> <br />Given the hectic schedule and frequent travel of professionals, corporate training must be available in multiple modes like in-house, open-house, private, public, instructor-led, online, virtual, which can be consumed by the trainees on schedule as well as when possible. <br /><br />Further, companies expect same level of professionalism from its training providers, that their customers expect of them. If training vendors want to develop a serious long term engagement with their customers, offering “Service Level Agreements” has to be an integral and a standard practice.<br /><br /><em>(The writer is Director of SpringPeople Software Pvt Ltd)</em></p>
