Four Steps to Show the Value of Training

Many businesses struggle with whether they are getting their money’s worth in sending employees to training classes. This question can be applied to project management training as well as any other type of business training. You know the cost side of training too well. But how do you tell what the business value is?

The most common way to determine value today is to ask the trainee whether he or she thinks the class was valuable. This is very touchy-feely and doesn’t give you much information to go on, but it is probably the most that most companies ask in terms of follow-up.

A Rigorous Approach

There is a process to more rigorously determine the value received for your training dollars. These ideas are not for the faint of heart. They take more preparation and they take more of that most precious commodity – time. But see if it makes sense, and whether the results of this process will give you a much better feel for the value that you are receiving from training. You can also start with some of these steps, and try for the rest later.

1. First, the trainee and their manager meet a few weeks before the training is scheduled to make sure the trainee is ready for the class. One of the important parts of the discussion is to identify opportunities where the trainee can apply the new skills on their job. This information should be documented so that it can be compared with a post-class assessment done later.

• When the actual class begins each of the trainees should complete an initial survey showing their specific knowledge level of the class material.
• A week or two after the class, the trainee completes a post-class survey showing their current knowledge level in the subject. For the most part, it is exactly the same as the initial survey from activity #2 above. This is compared to the initial survey to provide a sense for how much the trainee learned – at least in their own opinion. If this survey comes out close to the original version, it may show that the training may not have been very effective. You would expect that the post-class survey would show improvement.

1. Here is the key step. A few months after the class, the trainee and their manager meet again for a post-class assessment, which is a follow-up to activity #1 above. In this discussion, the trainee and manager discuss the value of the class, and whether the trainee has been able to apply the new skills. In fact, the training may have been superb, but if there have been no opportunities to apply the new skills, then the business value will be marginal. The trainee and manager can then discuss the business value that was gained by applying the new skills on the job.

Summary

In most training classes today, the trainee completes the class feedback for the benefit of the training company, and then tells his or her manager how good the class was. This superficial feedback is all that is available to gauge business value. However, the real test of business value is whether the class resulted in an increased skill level that can be applied to the job to make a person more productive. This cannot be determined immediately after a class. The only way to determine business value is to determine in the months after the class whether or not the training has actually been applied on the job. If you capture this information on all your classes, you will get a much better and more fact-based view of whether the classes you pay for are providing business value to your company.

Four Benefits of Project Management Training

The following are five reasons training is invaluable to you as a project manager.

#1 – Training Keeps You Engaged

Are you feeling a little sluggish on the job? Do you dread the ride into work each morning thinking about the long and boring day ahead of you? Training dispels the monotony. Take a course about an aspect of project management that really interests you. It may be risk management, agile methodologies, or root cause analysis. Deepening your knowledge in areas of interest will shake up your otherwise normal routine and get you excited about your job again.

#2 – Training Helps Your Career

Most professional certifications require an ongoing commitment to training and education. While this takes time, the upside is that it comes with real financial value. For example, a PMP certified project manager will make an average of $10,000 more per year than their non-certified counterpart. Keep your training current and an eye on your employment landscape and you’ll find yourself doing very well.

Current and potential employers like to see an ongoing pursuit of education. It helps them appreciate you as a lifelong learner who has followed a particular niche or specialty in your project management career.

#3 – Training Introduces New Ideas

You will always pick up something new when you attend a project management training course, simply because the discipline of learning temporarily removes you from your situation and gives you an aerial, objective view. For example, even experienced project managers learn new ideas and techniques attending a fundamentals class. They learn new ways of doing things they are already familiar with.

Training allows your experience and new learning to come together and provide a more holistic perspective than ever before. These nuggets of wisdom may not always be groundbreaking or revolutionary, but they are new. When you go to a training course with this mindset, you will come back with faster, more efficient and profitable ways to complete projects to share with your peers.

#4 – Training Exposes You to Other People

Most classes allow you to interact with new people. Maybe it even allows you to interact with current co-workers in new ways. It’s valuable to get out of your office or cubicle every now and then and see what the rest of the world is up to, and talk to your peers. The relationships you forge with your instructor, the person sitting next to you, or even someone you meet in an elevator can help you throughout the rest of your career in project management.

Don’t be like the doctor who hasn’t taken a training course since medical school. Find training that interests you today and you’ll benefit for years to come!

The essential project manager training that is available today has only one purpose. That is to make your project manager more efficient in the way and manner of them performing their assigned tasks. The acquiring of knowledge on all the ways this can be accomplished is the main focus of this type of course.

To have the project manager training courses available with the least amount of disruption to the organization was the focus of many providers of this service. The seminars were very informative, but took the project managers away from their place of business for up to a week. This also took a chunk out of their budget that during the lean times is not always possible or warranted.

This is one of the leading reasons why the new project manager training courses are now available online. This allows the project managers not to miss any time at work and are helping to progress their projects along and still learning new tactics they can apply on the job. While they were away at a seminar they still have their cell phones, but being present in the time of a crisis does make a significant difference in the ending results for the project.

By taking the project manager training courses online, they can also acquire the knowledge at their own pace and at the times of their choosing. This makes it possible for them to still be on the job and to be available if necessary while learning what is in the courses. They can even apply what they are learning to their present project with the guidance of the course instructions. These real world applications are only possible because they are present at their factories while learning the material.

The opportunities with the new online project manager training course have made it easier and more practical for an organization to give access to their managers. They already know the more a project manager knows and understand, the better chances their projects will become a success. By choosing the online versions, the learning of the material is faster, easier and better absorbed.