Tips to Properly Manage the Corporate Training Budget

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Though corporate training has been deemed as essential and vital for development and growth, a constraint in corporate training budget is actually one of the most commonly faced challenges for organizations. This perennial problem of limited budget has led to many organizations not investing enough in corporate training, leading to limited performance of employees. The results of an annual survey has shown that SMEs are less likely to invest in training partly due to their lack of resources.

Here are some tips that you can follow to ensure there’s enough budget for corporate training each year:

1. Plan ahead
2. Know the business objectives
3. Spend on certified training
4. Negotiate with your training provider

1. Plan ahead

A training budget is very important for an organization. Without a planned budget, there is no way to know if there are enough budget for corporate training for that year. Hence, it is good to approximate the amount of money needed for corporate training each year and set aside that amount of money in the budget. One method of estimation could be by doing research to predetermine the prices of training courses and multiplying it by the number of employees to be sent for training.

2. Know the business objectives

Naturally, organizations would wish to see improvements in employees’ performance after investing in corporate training. Hence, prioritizing the skills to equip employees with is necessary. Rather than sending them to courses with general skills, training courses with specific skills that are specific to the industry the organization is in will be better. Skills that are affecting the achievement of your organization’s objectives should be prioritized. Often, specialized training courses are more expensive than the general ones, but the improvements that can be seen in terms of performance will also be greater. This is to ensure that the training budget will be put into good use.

3. Spend on certified training

To preserve the budget, organizations may choose to send as many employees as possible for training organized by unaccredited training providers. However, in order to maximize every dollar of the corporate training budget and to avoid unnecessary additional spending on training, only engagement of accredited training courses should be done. Accreditations such as the ISO accreditation ensures the quality of the courses. This strategy of engaging in certified courses will increase employees’ perceived value of the training, hence significantly increasing their motivation to learn well from the courses and ultimately, improving business results.

4. Negotiate with your training provider

For organizations engaging in external training or via a training provider, one way to save costs will be to have a good relationship with the training provider. Certain specialized training providers such as Opus Kinetic offer time-based promotions such as early-bird prices. By taking up these kinds of courses, a huge sum of money can be saved, allowing more employees to undergo training with the same amount of budget.

Ultimately, a training budget is to provide assurance that there is enough money for development of skills for your employees for the year. Not only does strategizing for the good use of a budget alleviate the whole business’ performance, it also ensures many benefits for employees such as increased employees’ satisfaction. The full value of corporate training can only be seen if there is a budget for it.

Opus Kinetic believes that people are why organizations are successful, and giving people the knowledge to perform well at their job is integral for success. We pride ourselves as the premier provider of knowledge, offering acclaimed in-house trainings, and many other professional training courses spanning from various industries. Our training courses are well-researched and updated with the latest industry trends. For more information on our professional training programs, check out our training calendar below.