A great deal of training in the UK is part or fully funded via agencies such as train to gain with the laudable aim of helping businesses to become more competive while improving employee skills.
However, the issue with 'free' training is how well it is valued by the business and thus how well the knowledge gained by the employees is actually leveraged to achieve business success.
Free training is often brought into the business without board sign-off simply because it does not need financial authorisation. However, because it does not have the profile and has not been discussed at board level, the risk is that it does not receive the back-up it deserves.
For any business considering funded training, especially of a large level of intervention, I would argue that a board level team should consider:
1. The real internal cost of the training in terms of release, staff cover, lost efficiency etc...2. Consider what the ultimate benefits should be. These might not be pure cost saving but may well be a mixture of hard and soft benefits but should be a mixture of internal benefits and customer benefits in terms of improved quality, cost and delivery measures.
The process itself of discussing this is an important method of building commitment to worthwhile training and filtering out initiatives which are actually going to be more hassle than they are worth.
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