INTRODUCTION

CEOs today are focused on the rate of growth and are seeking competitive advantage through their organizational ability to make their employees more productive and grow faster.  Given the pivotal role employees play in bringing success to the organization, CEOs must be constantly asking HR leaders and L&OD heads strategic questions that help in business growth and profitability. This article takes a look at the most relevant ones!

10 QUESTIONS CEOS SHOULD ASK THEIR CORPORATE TRAINING HEADS

1. Are The Leadership Training ProgramsInitiatives Aligned With Organizational Objectives?
   The most basic need that an organization has from its employee development plan is to understand how it is contributing to the overall success of the business. You need to ask how your training initiatives are working to change your organization’s culture and bring positive and measurable results in the future.

2. Have you analyzed the short term and long term impact of training?
   It is important to ensure that the HR and L&OD heads have assessed both the long and short term impact of the training. If they are basing their decision on just the short term impact, your budget will prove to be a cost rather than an investment. Make sure that they have assessed the impact properly.

3. What Modules are Missing From the Training?
   “The Empires of future will be empires of the Mind” –  Winston Churchill
   Training can create future-ready competencies for your business. Smart training plans prepare employees and leaders for future job prospects that do not exist today. Ask your HR if the training initiatives are up to speed with the changing needs of the business. Ask them about the aspects that are missing from the training or do not exist in the module.

4. Is The Current Training Enhancing Efficiencies at Work?
   Your training should be clear in terms of the benefits it brings to the employees and the contribution it brings to their work. The path this learning takes needs to be oriented with the tasks in hand so it enables the employee to deliver in their current role and enhance their career growth both. Ask your HR whether they have assessed the contribution of training in enhancing effectiveness at work.

5. Are Employees gaining skills of execution?
   Knowledge and skill, both are important in today’s world. And an employee needs both, to perform their task. But most of the knowledge has already been gathered and we merely copy that. The main task is to execute the knowledge. Therefore, training must build a foundation of knowledge for an individual to develop & deliver skills required for his/ her role.

6. How Are You Measuring The Impact Of Training?
   Much like any other investment made into a system or solution, the results need to be quantifiable if you are to measure them. Introducing coaching and mentoring without an objective in mind makes it hard to measure the impact as you don’t know what you are looking for. Talk to your HR and Coaches to design the training in a manner that shows a net measurable output.

7. How Are Employees Segregated To Avoid A “One Size Fits All” Solution?
   Not all employees are on the same level. You can divide your organization into top performers, benchmark performers, mid-level performers and bottom performers. The L&OD efforts need to address all of these employees through clear deliverables specifically designed with the difference in mind.

8. How Is Training Differentiating Between Training Deliverables And Training Delivery?
   A trainer cannot just be concerned about delivering training. They need to be more concerned about training deliverables derived from the participants. In fact, training deliverables are the only way to justify training as an investment. The major aim of the training is to enable an employee to do a task independently or with limited supervision. This is the difference between delivering training and training deliverables, as differentiated by an experienced trainer.

9. How Are You Planning to Upgrade yourself?
   Every system, no matter how high-end and sophisticated it is, needs maintenance and upgrades. Businesses expect trainers to upgrade their skills on their own so that they can act as a custodian of the organization’s intellectual capital. As a business owner, it is important to ask your training heads about how they consistently keep up with the changing needs of their field.

10. What Methodology has been Implemented to Measure ROI?
    As mentioned above, training is an investment, and it needs to be able to show a financial return; a return on investment, or ROI. And the best way to understand the expected value of ROI is to ask your HR and training heads. While you are at it, make sure that your training heads put the right performance metrics in place that can be isolated and tracked to measure them for ROI calculation.

CONCLUSION

If you are asking the right questions, then you are heading in the right direction towards attaining optimal training levels. For more information on different employee development programs that you can use for your business, come to the experts of Corporate Leadership Training Programs in India, DTCI. With close to 25 years of experience, DTCI has been a dedicated consultation and training provider to more than 2000 organizations in India. Book your consultation with one of our experts today.