How To Waste Your Money On Training By Orli Daluz

No doubt, your serious attention to the development of your people is, to say the least, essential for the success of your organization and, therefore, cannot be put on hold. However, have you ever wondered whether you are spending your money wisely in training your human capital? If you want to be certain, here are some practical tips to ponder:

1. The immediate goal of training is learning, but its ultimate aim is p-e-r-f-o-r-m-a-n-c-e. We train people, not only for them to acquire new knowledge and skills, but also for them to be able to do (or do better) what they are hired to do.

This is, and should be, the principal rule and consideration when training people in business organizations. Unfortunately, employee training is being conducted in many firms for the wrong reasons. There are a lot of nice-to-know courses out there, but they may not amount to better performance once learned. Hence, if you want to make training a fruitful investment rather than a wasteful expense, one of the first questions you should ask is, Will this training program or seminar help the target participant perform better? If the answer is "no" or "not sure," then you are about to lose your money.

2 Nevertheless, before you can respond to the question with a categorical "yes," your Human Resource Development (HRD) or training staff should have conducted a good Training Needs Analysis (TNA). This is a method of assessing what the target recipient of the program needs in terms of knowledge and skills.