We work very closely with line managers and business heads to win their support for training. Decisions about budgets are devolved to the business heads, so if you can persuade them that training is necessary they will feel responsible for the work you want to do, and defend your budgets for you.If certain key performance indicators and business improvements are dependent on development work then you will win support. Is your training driving the business, and therefore highly valued? If your training is just nice to do and not essential, then it will get cut, and rightly. So you cant claim that everything is essential. That will be exposed and challenged. But by being focused on what is really important you will be more aware of where you can make cuts with minimal damage to the business.
Steve Newhall, managing director, DDI
It is a familiar argument, particularly in a market like this, that cuts will be required. One major reason not to cut is that we are supposed to be looking for higher productivity. Reducing development opportunities when you are already expecting more from fewer people might not make sense. But the pressure on budgets could have a positive effect too. It might remove some of the sheep-dip approach that hasnt been thought through and hasnt delivered results so far. Lack of development opportunities is one of the main causes of high staff turnover. You tend to lose the people you least want to, because they are the ones who can walk into another job. Cutting budgets may damage your employer brand both internally and externally. You might not want people to think that training is always the first thing to go when times are hard.Do you want customer service to suffer because of cuts? You could get into a downward spiral, where a tough market leads to cutbacks where you can least afford to make them. One financial organisation we are working with is laying some people off while investing more in customer services getting the right people where they need them. That is the sort of decision you may need to make.
Martyn Sloman, adviser, CIPD
Commitment to training and individual learning is about more than just budgets. The main scarce resource in organisations today is time. Its the time factor that is under attack as much as bottom-line spending. The length of courses is being squeezed left, right and centre. There is pressure to deliver more in modular form.We should welcome this change. In the past very extended courses, particularly in the soft skills area, didnt always deliver what you wanted.We know that investment in skills is linked with business success, and that as we become a more knowledge-based economy the confident and capable employee will perform if the right training has taken place. Its most obvious in personal services the person who goes beyond the minimum requirement of the job, displaying appropriate discretionary behaviour. We have all seen this at first hand. In the past as trainers we have used the language of training and not the language of business. We have to convince other managers that we can get the right results through training, and that is how we will protect our spend, and time.
