5 Reasons Your Company Needs Outsourced Training

Training and development of your staff is an often-forgotten or neglected necessity within a business. Ninety-four per cent of employees say that they would stay at their current company longer if it invested more in their career,¹ yet more than a third of employers admit they haven’t done anything to invest in staff development in the past year.² Without training and development, strong businesses are left weaker year after year, as their in-house expertise falls behind industry expectations. However, 44% of companies report that their existing in-house learning management systems no longer meet their development requirements.³ That is why businesses are increasingly turning to outsourced training as a solution.

Outsourced training makes up 42% of American corporate training budgets⁴ (and 35% of African corporate training budgets).⁵ There are a number of reasons to consider outsourcing, but these are some of the reasons that your company may be in need of outsourced training and development:

1. High staff turnover
   A high staff turnover might result in teams having to interact with unfamiliarity, or a general sense of unease. One of the motivating factors for employees leaving a workplace is that they can no longer see growth for themselves or their career in their current position.⁶ In fact, 56% of employees would jump at the opportunity to learn if their managers suggested appropriate courses or material.⁷ Businesses who do not employ a good training and development programme will quite likely find themselves with a high staff turnover, and will struggle to grow their business without holding onto experienced personnel.⁸
2. Lack of skills
   If a business is struggling to fill their senior roles internally or identifies that employees are stagnant in their current roles, this can often be due to a lack of proper staff development.⁹ Forty-two per cent of employees claim development is the most important factor when deciding to join a company, and simply offering a training programme would retain 86% of millennials in their current positions.¹⁰ Some of the tell-tale signs that you need to consider outsourcing your training are:¹¹
   
   1. Difficulty in promoting employees and having to recruit senior candidates outside of the company.
   2. A reduction in productivity or sub-optimal output, which is usually evident by employees spending too much time on small tasks, or clients being unhappy with the quality of work delivered.
   3. Management and senior staff spending the majority of their time monitoring junior team members.
3. Outstanding legal requirements
   There are various governmental and international legal requirements that govern different industries with regards to staff training and development. Businesses have to follow local laws on the amount and kind of training they supply to their staff,¹² but they also have to make sure their employees are abiding by new international policies, such as the new data protection policies under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Protection of Personal Information (POPI).¹³
   When new laws and policies are passed, a business is required to train their staff so that they are empowered to perform best in their role and within the law. But some businesses simply do not have the in-house infrastructure or expertise to meet the legal requirements; while others might not have the time to keep track of the policies regarding their training requirements.¹⁴ If this is the case, outsourced options are an immediate way to achieve your legal status.
4. Big in-house costs
   Deloitte found that 59% of businesses interviewed in their Global Outsourcing Survey used outsourcing as a cost-cutting tool.¹⁵ As a company grows, the volume of employees to train can be overwhelming for the number of in-house qualified trainers. The solutions may be limited to recruiting new trainers, rebuilding the development programme, or outsourcing to already established training professionals. However, the costs involved in creating an internal development programme and recruiting new qualified trainers is often higher than outsourcing.¹⁶
5. Too little time
   When you’re managing a business, keeping up with the latest employee training methods is often a challenge. Managers often lack the time and skills,¹⁷ as they are not experts on every industry-related topic or skill set.¹⁸ When a business finds itself unable to offer the latest (and suitable) training internally, it should consider external suppliers.

One of the benefits of an outsourced training solution is that organisations are able to individually tailor it for a specific business structure. Some businesses move all of their training and development into a custom outsourced programme, while others develop an original in-house training programme, but most businesses will have a hybrid approach.¹⁹

Outsourced training is becoming more popular having already grown to be a $76.9 billion industry in 2016.²⁰ The flexibility of outsourcing is what makes it most attractive – allowing managers to incorporate the elements that are either too expensive or too resource-heavy, such as curriculum or content development, while still maintaining control of the areas they find most important, such as hard skill building. Whether you’re finding your company has a high staff turnover, a lack of in-house skills, outstanding legal requirements, too little budget to develop an in-house programme, or just too little time… you’re ready to look into outsourcing your employee training.

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