The Decision to Purchase or Design a Training Program

 

The Decision to Purchase or Design a Training Program:

Once it has been determined that a training program is an appropriate course of action to mange a performance problem, the human resource professional faces a make or buy decision. Many private training companies and consultants offer an extensive array of courses on general topics. In many cases, it is more economical for an organization to purchase these materials, packaged in professional formats, than to develop the materials themselves, which in many cases will be used only once or twice.

          The advantages of packaged programs are high quality, immediate delivery, ancillary services, the potential to customize the package to the organization, benefits from others implementation experience, extensive testing, and often less expense than internally developed programs.

          Training programs developed internally by an organization also have some advantages including security and confidentiality, use of the organization expertise, understanding of the specific target audience and organization, and the pride and credibility of having a customized program.

          Given the pros and cons of both alternatives, how does a training manager decide to purchase or design a training program? Obviously, one of the most important factors to consider is the cost of each alternative. A cost benefit analysis would be necessary to determine the best option. Some types of training programs will be much more costly to design than to purchase. However, there are other factors that should also be considered in addition to cost.

          Time is also a factor in terms of how soon the organization wants to begin training. Given the amount of time required to design a new training program, if there is a need or desire to begin training as soon as possible than the organization will need to purchase a training programs. In effect, the sooner that the organization wants to begin training the less likely there will be sufficient time to design a new training program.

          Another important consideration is the number of employees who will need to be trained and the extent to which future employees will also receive training. If a relatively small number of employees require training, then it is probably not worthwhile to design an entire training program. However, if a large number of current employees need to receive training as well as future employees, then designing a new training program from scratch makes more sense. In other words, to the extent that the training program will be used for many employees in both the sort and long term, a decision to design the program is more favorable.