(Part 4) Are you avoiding this?

Silhouette of virtual meeting

This is part 4 of a 4-part series of blogs to help Learning & Development practitioners. If you missed the previous articles, here are the links:

Here's a novel thought. An important part of your job is to find, meet and build relationships with training providers.

Have you been avoiding this? Don't. The right training provider will make your job easier. And if you know your providers and their offerings, you will be able to deliver a better service to your clients. And that makes you look good.

Here are a few things I want you to think about.

Don’t make it Procurement's job

Your Procurement department has a process for supplier registration. It’s usually a long, slow process, and no-one enjoys it. But don’t assume that if a supplier isn’t registered, it isn’t worth the effort to get them registered.

There are many good reasons to make contact with new providers.

  • They may have a new offering that your developers will love.
  • Your existing supplier may change direction or go out of business. I've seen this happen many times. You don’t want to be left without options when there is an urgent training request.
  • Developers want to have a choice. Remember that what they want from a training provider is not the same as what Procurement wants.

Take note of the service you get

You usually deal with an account manager or a sales person at the training provider.

I know that quality of the service you get from the sales team doesn’t guarantee the quality of the training. Or vice versa.

But if a provider cares about the quality of its training, it will also care about the quality of its service.

Think about the drive to improve quality in your own company. Does it only apply to one department? Probably not.

Don’t get stuck on size

Bigger doesn't mean better. You might think it is easier to have one supplier who can offer every kind of IT training, from Microsoft Word to Java Programming to network configuration. But that can be an expensive mistake.

You might have heard the expression: "Jack of all trades, master of none." There’s a reason for that idiom. Programmer training is a specialised field.

A few years ago I was talking to a developer at a big company. He had been on some of our courses in the past, and he wanted to attend another one. But his company had signed a contract to only use Training Provider X. He didn’t like the courses from X. So he decided that he would rather not do any training at all. That's a lose-lose situation for everyone.

Take the initiative

This can be a fun part of your job, because you will meet new people. It is also the key to delivering good service.

Between the POPI act and lockdown, it’s very difficult for new training providers to make contact with you. But there is no reason why you can’t reach out to them. Some might not offer what you need. But you’ll also find someone who can help you be even better at your job.

This is the last of this series of posts. I hope they’ve helped you and given you something to think about.

We would love to chat to you about your training needs. So go ahead and drop us an email and we can schedule a time to chat.

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