Planning For Professional Development

At the end of every financial year, our clients start to focus on professional development as part of their budgeting process.

A few ideas on how you can make the most of your training budgets:

  1. Plan a program – think about who needs training and in what areas
  2. Capabilities across your organisation – think of where you have skills and where you have gaps in order to prioritise your budgets. Are you spending on some areas while neglecting others with lots of needs?
  3. Capture who’s done what – many organisations don’t have a central record of what training has been completed, which means sometimes only the loudest get training, while others can go years without any investment.
  4. Train in downtimes – don’t cut your productivity when you need it the most. Schedule training for times when your staff are less busy. That may mean during slower months, or on certain days or even certain times of the day.
  5. Inhouse vs public courses – there’s pros and cons for each, but if you want to double-up your training as a team-building exercise, then choose in-house. Your program can be tailored to your needs, and can help to create a shared understanding and to build team culture.