Training & Development is considered as one of the critical aspects in HR Management and I would project it as mission critical. This should be irrespective of size of the organization.

But do you believe that it is easy to convince the investor and get a decent training budget. India, still HR folks used to complain “what to do, we don’t have enough budget allocation for training. We can’t plan for this training etc...”

Let’s check how to prepare training plan and get it approved by CEO or Board of Directors.

HR Professional community in India is really matured, articulate, knowledgeable and competent but unlike their counterparts in America or Europe, it has been perceived that HR Department is a fancy instrument of investor and their duty is just to create ‘hype’ in organization on behalf of CEO. I would say HR should act as the strategic partner (not just in articles or text books) to CEO and they should come out of the traditional management practices.

If HR Head of a company is unable to conceptualize,document and distribute Policies and Procedures in a simple manner or unable to prepare training plan and get it approved, should we say, there is a problem in the organization or HR Manager is
not competent?

I still recall what a ‘budding HR professional’ once shared in a HR Conclave. “Hi man I can’t work there, hate the smell of those workers and my boss is asking me to hang around the shop floor to learn their problems. That man is crazy and he asked me to interact to those workers and befriend” Is this just an orientation problem or can we say her attitude should be changed? I am leaving that question to you. Let’s go back to Training.

When HR Department submits budget request,substantial materials to support the need for training, justification towards cost and more importantly the return on investment (ROI). You can’t convince a business man to invest something without explaining the ROI part.

In this context, let’s explore a process which will help HR Department to administer training in a systematic manner

1. Prepare job profile of all employees and update it at least once in 6 months
2. Connect individual goals [responsibilities, target and measure] to organizational goals
3. Perform GAP analysis in terms of competencies, skills and qualifications etc at least once in 6 months
4. Allow employee to request for training, through out the year
   Allow immediate manager to request training for team members, through out the year
5. Make training needs assessment mandatory with annual appraisal
6. HR Department should collate and analyze Training needs of employees, once in a year and prepare a report
7. HR Head should discuss with Line Managers, CEO and Investors about long term as well as short term organizational plans and based on that HR should come up with Training Plan and proposal with time lines and budget requirements. Substantial documents/reports like last 2 years appraisal reports, overall people development index, GAP Analysis report for the last 1 year, List of training programmes to be scheduled with credentials on Trainers (in house/external), time required to conduct training, cost towards each training events and overall training. Inferences on benefits to company if go ahead with structured training programme
8. Once the budget is approved, publish a Training Calendar
9. Request employees as well as managers to request for training events
10. Select employees based on requests and finalise participants
11. Intimate participants, track attendance and get structured feedback on training event
12. Evaluate team effectiveness, post training by managers
13. Assess return on investment, post training (let’s say after 1 or 2 years) and prepare reports for corporate team. This will get you green signal for subsequent training budgets.
    
14. For streamlining the process and make training administration simple, try to automate the process in your organization