I am an internal trainer and advertise my course offerings for the year to all employees. I end up getting twice as many people enrolling as there are spots available. I am wondering how others determine who gets enrolled and who goes on the wait list. Last year it was first come first serve, but then several people were able to take 3-4 classes while others never even got into one. Advice?!?

I'm not sure I see a problem with your current situation, unless these classes are required for something important. If certain people keep missing out on a learning opportunity, maybe they need to get their you-know-whats in gear more quicly and put their requests in earlier. Why is that your responsibility?

That said, prerequisites and business need should help to weed out people just taking a class because they want to take a class, but beyond that, I think "first come first served" is fair and justified. If that means you are not serving a rather large population, it may be time to seriously consider adding resources (which may mean more classes, and/or more people to teach them, etc.). If the classes are justified in the first place, it should be a natural extension to justify adding resources. If that's not in the budget (and where does anybody have that nowadays), then it is what it is.

Thanks LoveLearning-

I figured it is worth a shot seeing if anyone does it differently, but, like you siad, it is what it is.

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I figured it is worth a shot seeing if anyone does it differently, but, like you siad, it is what it is.

Golly, I hope we can do better than that. First come, first served is a rather dumb way to do it, since whether someone applies early or late says nothing about whether the training is critical, or largely irrelevant to their contributions to the organization or to completing their job tasks.

One way to come at this (it depends on things like volume, practicality, etc) is that when people apply, they indicate their job titles, and the link between the course and their jobs in ten words or so. Then evaluate on a triage type basis.

Or, another is to simply ask: Is this essential, good to know, or optional with respect to your job.

Or another is to have the authorizing manager evaluate the importance of the training, etc.

Yet another is to priorize on whether the applicant/manager has suggested the training as part of a development plan (or a performance review problem-solving tactic).

Yes, you will sometimes get fibs. But you'll be far more likely to allocate scarce training resources to the people who will be most able to use the learning to contribute better, etc.

There's a lot of variations you can try if the none of the above are workable in the details. It's definitely doable to move away from a strict first come first served. I have no idea why anyone would care WHEN someone applied (unless training is some kind of reward for early applications?!)

The Performance Management Resource Center
http://performance-appraisals.org

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like you siad, it is what it is.

Just one perspective, jg, based on the small amount of info you've provided and what I've seen over the years. If you want to provide more opportunities for more people, that usually means more resources. If you can do that, great.