At Last, Make Money From Training

(This article was published in The Straits Times on 3 Feb 2016 at page C44)
Some people think that training and development are a luxury for you cannot really measure its tangible benefits. Yet others think that there must at least be a 200% payoff (benefits over training cost) for any training program to be considered beneficial.  To us, there are 7 tangible benefits that you can touch and feel IMMEDIATELY after the training:

1.     Ask the participants to do a written assessment of the training in terms of 3 areas: how does it improve their work, make their work easier or given them new ideas. You can also ask them to do a 30-day Action Plan on the action that they will take within 30 days of the training

2.     Voluntary self-reporting by the participants.  If your participants can report to you without being asked, you can be sure that they enjoyed the training and find it useful

3.     Measure the improvements in the work  This is very easy to be done for hard skills training (like how to operate a machine), but even for soft skills, you too can measure the improvements if you observe enough

4.     Measure the reduction in negativeness at work: errors, grievances, delays, lateness, poor communication and negative attitude.  Unless you're far away from the employees, all you need to do is to open your eyes and ears and you'll be able to observe the reduction in negativeness in just an hour

5.     Look for improvement to Motivation, Morale and Enthusiasm in the office.  For example, do people now walk faster than before when they come to work?  After training, employees should be more open and not afraid of new ideas and you can easily test them in your weekly meeting with them

6.     Identify specific areas that the training are supposed to have addressed.  Like sales training would have equipped your people with tactics to over customers' objections while management training will teach them how to do coaching

7.     Compute the real dollars and cents that your training has delivered.  Like higher productivity.  If your employee earns $3,000 a month, a mere 2% increase in productivity will translate into a savings of $60 a month.  If your employee can maintain such increase in productivity for 3 months, your company will make $180.  Since the Productivity and Innovation Scheme (PIC) pays 60% of the course fees, assuming a course fee of $200, your net cost is $80.   Thus the profit to your company is easily $180 less $80 = $100.  Some training providers give profit guarantee, meaning that if you don't see savings that is equal to your net training cost, they will refund your training fee. For our list of courses and their details, visit www.asiatrainers.com 

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