My organization is undergoing some major changes. We have a corporate education & development department, which previously was considered a cost center/corporate expense and was funded by a corporate budget. I anticipate that we may shift (at least in part) to a product offering that regions/divisions will opt to purchase. Can anyone direct me to resources on how to quantify our products/services and market these to our internal customers?

is there an intranet in your office? Well that can really help...

It sounds like everyone views training as a commodity and, therefore, an expense. This happens when training departments don't make a conscious effort to tie their training specifically and clearly to the business needs of the company.

The first thing I would do is look at every course you have and ask yourself, "How does this help our business mission?" If you don't have a clear and simple answer, you may not need it.

Then consider renaming some of the "marginal" courses that do have some business reason and revising some of the content so they clearly support the business needs.

Also, have you ever done any studies that tie the outcomes of the time spent in training to business needs?

If all you have done is say we sent 200 employees through 4,328 hours of training last year (meaning "look how busy we were"), the execs can also say, "Without some kind of tangible results from that training, it looks like we lost 4,328 hours of productivity last year. That has to STOP!"

You must get out of the "little red schoolhouse" mindset and keep asking yourself, "If we and our training courses were an outside vendor, would the company hire us to train?" Then focus on doing things that WOULD MAKE them want you and your training.

I totally agree with Outsource. The division in our org. that has the most hours of learning. Has the lowest rate of attrition, highest emloyee satisfaction and engagment and extremely high customer sat. It doesn't get more convincing then that.

Outsource makes a great point that is often overlooked in the training world. By trade we are typically not as analytical as the customers we service but to define our value in their terms we must be able to wear this hat. Providing the benefits you're realizing by gathering data (surveys or performance changes post training) will allow you to sell the benefits in hard numbers that your customers will understand. We must also be good at marketing our offerings to the masses. This is where your intranet can come into play. Providing a catalogue of resources (classes and self help tools) will drive more business units to use the services you offer through simple awareness, particularly if some of the self help offerings are free.

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