L&D Managers – The real cost of sourcing, booking and organising training yourself

Your role as a Learning & Development (L&D) Manager is probably going to include managing the end to end processes, including working with business leaders and managers, designing training solutions, delivering solutions, budget management, and, hopefully for you, managing a team. 

That last point is crucial – managing a team.  Having a team should mean you have someone, or a group of people, to delegate tasks to.  If you do, read on as we are sure there will be tips for you, and you might be interested in also reading our article about time spent by L&D Administrators on organising training.

If you don’t have a team, we feel you’ll relate to this article straight away and could benefit from additional help.

So how much time is spent on training?

We’ve looked at the time the different tasks can take, from the initial sourcing of solutions, through to booking and then all the necessary administration such as joining instructions, invoicing, reminders, etc.

All of the times are best cases taken from a magical land we’ve created where everything runs perfectly, staff share their needs, providers provide you with the correct information each time and are easy to deal with.

We accounted for tasks such as the initial chat with staff, speaking with external providers, collating information, asking and answering questions, chatting with staff again, making the booking, handling with administration such as joining instructions, dealing with amendments, handling invoices and more.  The below is based on a single request from one person for external training.

We found that just one training enquiry would probably use up at least 4 hours of your time.

Over a year, based on 100 requirements, over one fifth of your time could be spent in this manner.

Is what you are doing with your time the right activity for your role and experience?

It’s a question you should be asking yourself on a regular basis, and having the answers will help you to focus your time and energy in the right way.

We suggest using these questions as a starting point.

• Could someone else, with less experience and skill do what I’m doing right now?
• Would I pay someone else less than I currently earn per hour for the activity I’m currently doing?
• Is there anything of greater value to the organisation that I could be doing instead of what I’m doing right now?
• Is what I’m doing right now reflective of my perceived role within the business?
• Why am I doing what I’m currently doing right now?
• Am I making excuses to others, or myself, for continuing to do things I think I shouldn’t be doing?

If you answer yes to the first three questions, the chances are, your time is spent on activity beneath your skill set, and, therefore, its lower value than what you could, or maybe, should be doing instead.

Imagine what you could do if you had more time?

And imagine what you could do if you weren’t doing the lower value work.   We are sure you’ve asked yourself this question previously.  We asked our customers this, both before and after they started to working with us.   Some of the main points made included:

• Create a L&D strategy – “it’s not something I have to do, but without it my company is never going to have a structured way of supporting its staff, so this is my number one priority”

• Implement the L&D Strategy – “I always knew what I wanted to do, but never had enough time to really focus on getting things moving”

• Add more value to the business – “I now have more time to discuss my company’s learning needs, from speaking to senior managers, all the way down to new starters,  this has helped me to know so much more about what is happening, such as the need for standardised project management training across three departments”

• Develop my own skills – “I spent so much time on helping others, I neglected my own development, but not anymore”

• Keep up to date with industry – “I’m attending events, taking webinars as a way of ensuring I keep up to date with what is happening in my industry.  I have made some great connections. Next on my list is scheduling time to read the CIPD yearly report “

• Improve work – life priority – “I still work long days, and probably always will do, but I’m no longer logging in from home on a Sunday just to keep on top of things.”

So what can you do about it?

If you are in this situation then there are plenty of things you can do to change it, from using internal resource to external companies.

• Delegate more to your team – if you have a team, get them taking on the tasks that you don’t want to, or shouldn’t be doing.  Train them up, document processes and support only when needed.  Empower them by asking “what would you do if I was unavailable?” when they have questions, and discuss their ideas.

• Use internal resource – if you don’t have a training team, then who else could, or would, be interested in helping.  Could the finance department handle invoices directly?  Can procurement be responsible for requesting new supplier data? 

• Create guides – help your staff and managers to help you.   What do we mean?  Create a guide on helping them to uncover their learning need without your involvement, a guide on what information you require from them to source suitable options or a frequently asked questions document.   Take it from us, if you can document something, then people will generally use that rather than always ask you, and it creates a standard approach. 

• Review technology ­and systems – this doesn’t have to be anything too technical, but look at the way you work and how can it be improved.  For example, some of our customers place external training request forms on their intranet that are completed and sent to us to use when sourcing and booking training.   This saves time, keeps information consistent and everyone knows the process. 

• Use providers – if you work with the same providers on a regular basis then introduce a process which is the same, e.g. ask them to provide information against a template, making comparison with other providers much easier for you and your staff.  Or get them to send information to your staff directly, but keeping you in the loop, and with defined boundaries on what they can and can’t send. 

• Work with Managed Learning Services– Managed Learning Service providers, will source and book training for you and your staff, working on your behalf, and specialise in doing this. Yes this is what we do and we have some great feedback from our customers.  However there are other companies out there, so make sure you consider all of them.  Be wary of the training provider who offers this as an add-on service.

Remember though, don’t try and change too much too soon.  Make sure you get the balance right; always consider the impact on your staff, and what it might have on how you and L&D in your business is viewed.

Next steps

If you are interested in exploring what help you need or working with us, then we’d love to have a chat.   We might be the best thing for you, or if we don’t think we are, then we’ll point you in the right direction.  Either way, we’d love to have a chat about your situation.  Call on 0845 519 7408 or email us today.