Ways to avoid cutting your training budget during the downturn?

Author: Barry Holloway, Chief Marketing Officer

Worries about the state of the economy are doubtless causing businesses to look at ways to cut cost. At my last company, one of the areas that was quickest in attracting Finance Director’s red pen was the training budget.  This was never a popular move and thankfully there are ways to avoid it.

Any investment in training is in time as well as money, so keep the time that’s been allocated and avoid the cost.  There are loads of opportunities for self-teaching at little or no cost and reserving specific time slots for self-development means that people will take time out of their usual work day.

There are lots of skills within any company that can be shared.  This internal training can be rewarding for both parties.  At uSwitch we introduced lunchtime learning sessions, where functional specialists would share their knowledge with other people.  It was optional, informal and very popular.

Cut out unnecessary travelling costs.  I heard recently about one of our customers who uses Yuuguu to train hotel reception staff in different European cities.   This saves time and money in an area where ongoing training is really important to keep customers happy.  You can read some more thoughts about using Yuuguu for training.  

Do you have any tips to add to my list?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    Thanks for sharing this post. There's always a room fro improvement, we'll be more marketable the more training we get. My company was sending out off site trainings before, but since we're cost cutting we fly our trainers instead.

    I guess this is happening everywhere.
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    Like you say, allocate specific timeslots for people to take ownership of their own training and development. Have this culture embedded in the team.

    Then, when individuals find particularly great resources that have helped them, they could arrange small sessions to share this with their peers: using Yuuguu to present information on what they have found and taught themselves.

    Sharing new knowledge, skills, and building up that team "vibe" even when they may rarely, or even never, meet face-to-face.
 
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