Training Industry Quarterly - Winter 2010 - 27

efits of training to gain approval. Doing this is a mistake and places T&D in a defensive position. Secret No. 2: Most senior managers are already sold on the training need. The buy-in needed is about which training initiative presents the most business sense and tangible benefits. When senior managers involve certain parties, like T&D, to participate in decision-making processes they clearly stating, “sell us on what training will do for the organization in the business terms we understand” through questions such as: • How is the learning strategy in line with the organization’s overall vision or direction? • What are the expected and tangible outcomes or benefits of the learning strategy? • How will it be marketed within the organization? • How will we gain the buy-in from the affected departments and individuals? • How will T&D justify the cost and investment for the training? • What are the business metrics to measure organizational impact? This is far from being an exhaustive list of questions, but it is a starting point for T&D to demonstrate to their senior counterparts and stakeholders how their involvement will contribute to the expected business results. Proving T&D’s worth Every operational business unit is held to accountability in demonstrating profitability. Management, alternatively, view supporting business functions, such as T&D, as cost centers. As a result of scarce fi- nancial resources, senior managers expect cost centers to also produce business benefits albeit not profit. As a result, the recent trend to build T&D’s credibility is measuring an initiative’s monetary benefit with respect to the initial investment.. The difficulty senior and operational business managers have in applying return-on-investment to training is twofold. First, according to management accounting concepts, ROI is primarily measured on tangible, not intangible, assets. These assets are directly correlated to profitability outcomes. Second, one does not measure the ROI of a cost, and T&D is considered a cost center. Even though managers focus on the organization’s financial results, they do not measure T&D in the same way. Managers recognize that training is a cost of doing business and would rather see its effectiveness measured than be sure the costs are fully covered. Effectiveness is about how the expense of a cost center initiative contributes to the improving performance. When T&D’s contribution connects to improving business performance, then management will also see T&D as a valued partner to achieving business objectives. Ajay Pangarkar and Teresa Kirkwood are partners at CentralKnowledge.com and the authors of “The Trainer’s Balanced Scorecard: A Complete Resource for Linking Learning to Organizational Strategy,” “The Trainer’s Portable Mentor” and “Building Business Acumen for Trainers.” E-mail the authors at editor@trainingindustry.com. Takeaways For every business leader, employee training is viewed as simply another budget allocation just like every other business activity in the organization. Whereas some business activities are considered proﬁt centers, training and development is considered a cost center since it is a supportive business function that enables business results for the organization’s proﬁt centers. Those involved in and responsible for training must recognize training’s role not simply as a support function but also as a business function. They can do this by: • Proactively learning about and acting on what business results their proﬁt center partners are required to meet and contributing in a way that help achieving them. • Addressing every level of the decision-making process not just trying to gain the buy-in from senior-level managers. • Recognizing the essential questions that management expects their business activities to answer and how T&D answers those respective to themselves. • Discovering how to connect T&D’s results to management’s business investment without relying on a training ROI measure. • Integrating T&D’s role by positioning it as a necessary need rather than a necessary evil that does not tangibly deliver results. Training Industry Quarterly, Winter 2010 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

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Training Industry Quarterly - Winter 2010

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