Inhouse vs Outsourced Training:

Because I train employees on soft skills and developed my own programs, I often hear how companies will get by with training their employees in-house. And although this is necessary for detailed and job specific training needs, such as occupational procedures and policies. I saw that the effectiveness of certain training in house, is not up to standard, and it often effects a company’s money generating abilities. There are many different forms of training, e.g. E-Learning, classroom learning, 1-2-1 mentoring, webinars and seminars etc.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to determine if a company needs in-house or outsourced training:

1. Do your employees have the skills to teach or train a fellow employee?

2. Can your company afford a senior employee to give up their time to train another employee?

3. What are the operational costs going to be for disrupting the workplace while training takes place, include the costs of distracted employees?

4. Are you willing to invest in training and development if there is a return on investment?

5. Will outsourcing help you reach the goals faster?

6. What value and added benefits can you get for the costs of training?

Because some people don’t continue to apply new knowledge gained and lose momentum after short term training. I am naturally pro to outsourcing. So here is my list of benefits for outsourcing training:

1. You get objective feedback and results from a trained professional on the needs and effectiveness of your employee performance during and after training.

2. It takes less time away from seniors or leaders of the company – opposed to training employees themselves.

3. Most properly structured training programs offers the company feedback and reports on whether the objectives where learned and achieved and measurements on the return on investment of the training.

4. One of the benefits of my programs is only 1 hour a month of physical participation per employee (all other work done in the program is on their own time)- so saving time in a company is saving money.

5. People are naturally more honest with a 3rd party which means a 3rd party can identify problems quicker and help to reach goals faster.

6. Most good training providers should be able to add extra value. E.g. in my programs I have a build in rewards system that enhances a company’s incentive for learning image. E.g. not only give feedback on the training but further growth needs and individual objections or motivators should be identified as part of the feedback.

7. Trainers most likely come with training materials and methodologies that are proven.

8. Content can be customized according to the needs of the company.

9. Your company can get the training that your competitors might miss out on that can put you in a different league.

10. The terms of training can be up or down scaled to meet needs without the company having to hire someone full time.

Each organisation has their own reasons for choosing either and there is a space for both types of training in every company. It is a good idea to in each situation do a full training needs analysis with pro and con lists of every type of training that can be used. A big indicator of needing training is when people say that a problem happened because they did not know how to do something. Or they don’t understand why they must do something in a certain way etc. If an employee is asking those questions, I know most likely research and learning is required. Please let me know what you think, if you want to rather do in-house training or outsource and why? – info@ameliorate.co.za

As Always, Keep Improving

The Ameliorate Team

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