Key questions you should ask training providers March 26, 2018

Key questions you should ask training providers

Employee development is vital to employee engagement. Putting time, effort, and money into developing your employees shows them that they are important to the business, that you care about them and what they are capable of doing.

So now that you have established one of many reasons why employee development is key for your business, you are now looking to train some employees but you don’t have the appropriate expertise in-house so are now looking for an external training provider.

As the company training leader you need to ensure that employees get the highest possible value from the training. That means the training must match business needs while ensuring learner competency in the desired skill set.

We have put together few key questions to ask the training provider before you hire their services:

How can I be sure your training will increase my staff’s productivity?

If people aren’t more productive after their training, it could easily be a waste of your money and their time (which is also your money), so, ask the provider what systems it has in place to measure the effectiveness of its training programmes.

Is your training customised or off the shelf?

A question which is well worth asking, and digging for further evidence if the answer you truly want is “customised”. It’s pretty simple to take an off the shelf programme and claim you can customise it. It’s less easy to actually do so. Is your training provider really big enough to fulfil this promise? Do they have a track record of developing and delivering bespoke courses? Do they understand your sector, your specific needs? Can they put you in touch with a referee?

Trainer competence

Even the best training content and materials will count for little if the person presenting them is of poor quality. You should enquire about the person (or people) who will be presenting the training; establish their qualifications, practical experience of the topic, their training qualifications and how their competency as a trainer has been assessed.

How do you measure effectiveness?

Any training provider worth its salt will introduce a course by clearly outlining its aims and objectives. What you need to know is how they assess whether these have been achieved by the end of the course. Your first questions need to focus on what the training course entails, the materials provided and how effectiveness is assessed. For example, does the provider issue attendees with questionnaires (sometimes known as happy sheets) or informally test them in any way?

What’s your track record of delivering results?

It’s essential to find out how successful the potential training provider is at delivering what they promise. Don’t be afraid to ask for evidence.

Who writes your content?

Some courses are geared more towards selling a product rather than giving people a thorough grounding in its use. It’s worth considering the pros and cons of material written from a provider – it may be information straight from the horse’s mouth but will it be forthcoming on flaws – will the training provider point these out?