by Nerissa Miller

Created on: July 23, 2009

Constant upgrading is important for everyone who wants to stay relevant in today's society. Organizations are increasingly aware of the importance of providing training to employees, as they do not want dead wood employees that no longer contribute new ideas to the organization. Neither is an organization willing to lay off a long service employee before proper consideration, as that may affect the image of the company.

Employees in certain companies are allocated a certain number of training hours per year in which they have choices to the courses they want to attend, subject to the approval of their direct Supervisors. There are also companies that may request Supervisors to submit yearly training plan for their subordinates, while still allow unplanned training request.

Organizational training can be a waste if no proper monitoring is done on the part of the Human Resource personnel.

We cannot deny that some Supervisors are more "generous" than others. They do not consider in terms of the benefits that a training program will bring to the company, while approving training courses for their subordinates. Supervisors need to understand if is their responsibility to ensure that the training programs will help their subordinates improve their skills to bring benefits to the company, and not courses that only provide personal development to their subordinates, but not applicable to their jobs.

To prevent wastage on organizational training, the first thing to do is to educate Supervisors on the purpose of training, and training costs has to be included in the department yearly budgeting plan. When the training cost affects the department budget, Supervisors will pay notice to courses they approve.

The human resource department can be the second line of defence to prevent training wastage. Take note of employees that sign up for courses but did not sit through the whole course. Ensure that Supervisors put up pre and post training evaluation. If you monitor employees training evaluations, you will be able to know whether the courses will only bring wastage of the company's resource.

Structure the training programs into core, and optional courses. Have a proper training needs analysis to determine what are the compulsory courses that staff of different level, and departments have to complete, and what are the optional courses opened to staff. Proper course, and costs analysis will help the organization avoid training wastage.

Compare the training contents, and course of at least three course providers can help the company sift out better programs that better suit the organization needs.

With proper planning, and monitoring, organization can expect better staff performance, at minimal wastage on organizational training.

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