ADMS 3410 Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Learning Organization, Business Partner, Lifelong Learning
47 views6 pages
11 Jan 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Chapter 15: Training trends and best practices
Evolution and future of training and development
Role of training professionals:
While many training professionals spend most of their time designing and delivering training
programs, they are increasingly becoming more involved in strategic functions such as
facilitating organizational change, managing organizational knowledge, career planning, and
talent management.
Training and development function is transforming into a learning and performance strategic
function. It will focus more on results rather than activities and it will be integrated into business
of the organization at a strategic level; training functions will become performance consulting
centres and training professionals will become performance consultants.
Performance consultants: the role of the trainer is not just to provide training and
development, but also to provide solutions to performance problems.
Given the increasing importance of lifelong learning and the learning organization, the
role of the trainer is increasingly shifting from training to learning.
The role of trainer is to facilitate and create learning opportunities throughout the
organization, and to help organizations manage the transition to a learning organization.
A trainer’s primary responsibilities have traditionally revolved around:
Design
Delivery, and
Evaluation of T&D programs
Changes in the Trainer’s role
From staff employee to strategic business partner
•Key roles: (see Fig 15.1)
– Learning strategist
– Business partner
– Project manager
– Professional specialist
– Performance consultant providing solutions to performance problems
Outsourcing training and development:
It was noted that one of the main goals of Restructing at TELUS was to reduce the
number of external learning providers being used as 95 percent of its learning offerings
were provided through outsourced instructor-led training.
The use of external sources to provide training and development is known as
outsourcing.
Outsourcing: involves the use of an external supplier to provide training and
development programs and services.
There are number of reasons for outsourcing training and development:
Outsourcing provides organizations with access to specialist who have expertise in a
particular training area.
External vendors can provide a greater variety of training programs more efficiently and
less expensively than in-house training departments. (This is especially true for small
companies that do not have in-house expertise or enough staff to train to justify the
expense of in-house training design and delivery.
Outsourcing training and development has been found to result in increased
performance and improvements in the design and delivery of training, and training
professionals report a high level of overall satisfaction with their training suppliers.
An important factor for successful outsourcing is a trusting relationship between the
organization and its external vendor. The positive outcomes associated with outsourcing
have been found to be higher when there is frequent vendor-client interaction, when
contractual agreements are explicit, when there is greater trust in vendor, and when the
organization’s primary motivation for outsourcing is quality improvement.
Benefits to outsourcing
•Access to specialists
•Greater variety of programs
•More efficient and less expensive
•Time savings
•Improvements in compliance and accuracy
Risks in outsourcing
•Loss of control
•Vendor does not understand organization’s culture
•Loss of in-house expertise
•Increased vulnerability
To increase likelihood of success in outsourcing:
Establish trusting relationships
Have frequent client-vendor interaction