No doubt about it. Training should be within the Quality Department. HR is too far removed from the real world to know what the training needs should be. And so are separate training departments. Not long ago, there was a big push to decentralize training and have training professionals reside within the various departments. According to all the feedback, this worked very well. I don't know either why this is still a question. To provide valuable training that is directly related to the bottom line, there is no other alternative. It is only when training is "outside" and in HR or exists as a stand alone departemen that there is a need to prove ROI. If you are located within Quality, the value will be obvious and better aligned with business needs.

Thanks to all for their input. In reply to Dvsnhd99, the training we provide to staff is a mix of soft skills and specific job-related skills, mostly in the healthcare/clinical fields, i.e. updates on new medications, procedures, procedures related to providing social service supports, etc.

Aligning with a particular department outside of Quality or HR is unrealistic, as we have 4 distinct healthcare programs, all of which have different regulations and governing criteria.

Can anyone offer more specific reasons why training should be stand-alone or with Quality? While I appreciate opinions, I'm looking for additional specific rationale or even study results that make a case for stand-alone or Quality department alignment.

Thanks,
Kathy T

Hi Kathy,

While I don’t think you will receive a definite answer to your question, the Best Practices in Learning Governance article will guide you in the appropriate direction. I have been researching the same subject for the past 6 months now and it did answer a few of the questions I had.

Deciding where training should/could/must be within a corporate structure is a wicked problem where one can step on many toes… It depends on how mature the learning organisation is, what challenges the enterprise faces, what has worked before and what didn’t work. For me, there is no clear answer like “it goes here” or “it should be there”. The true question should be more like “Where should training be best positioned to have the highest possible impact considering the actual strategic, tactical and operational plans?” and “Are we ready to review this in the next 3 to 5 years ?”

Have a look at this Building Bridges: Lessons in Working with Business Units . Thought it was good also.

Good luck !

Hello Kathy T-

I was in your exact same shoes in March of 2000. You have the opportunity that comes along once in our careers if we're lucky. The ability to create a training/education department from really the ground up.

You want to be a stand alone department. This will allow you to build relationships with key executives for support without having to go through someone else. Being a separate department will allow you to support HR and QC educational items while at the same time not restricting your time and efforts to just those two departments. HR and QC intersect our world,and they are our close allies, but they truly do not know corporate education to the depth that we do. Being a separate department will allow you to better control your budget and what impacts it. Being separate allows you to focus on the research and building that requires a lot of time and effort. Being separate allows you, if done right, (my marketing hat is on!!) to position your new department into one of the key resources that decision makers seek out in strategic planning. I could go on and on . . .

As for examples, check the ASTD research items. You may also want to check out resources at ISPI.

As for examples,every company that decided to become #1 expanded their training, and if they abandoned it, they soon collapsed. My prior organization gave me the opportunity you now have, and by being separate (and hence not distracted), we were passionate, we made darn sure we had direct executive contact and support and everything we did was a value add to the person as well as the company. The result - they are still #1 and my department achieved their goals a quarter ahead of plan and a quarter under budget.

I agree with the earlier comment from my colleague...this a GOLDEN opportunity. Take it by the horns, be separate, and run with it! You'll do awesome!! Please keep us informed on how it goes.

I hope you find this helpful,

John92N

Hi Kathy T,

Here are a few specifics from my experience at an aerospace company and companies I have consulted with since. I was initially employed as an Engineer in the Quality Control Department. We were a research and development group studying Non-Destructive Inspection techniques. We were also responsible for certifying all the inspectors throughout the company. The reality of the situation was that we spent 95% or our time training the inspectors so that they could pass the certification tests and carry out the inspections.

Why did we have to intervene and essentially do the training function? Because the Employee Training and Development did not provide "real training." Their "trainers" were former inspectors (who supposedly knew the subject) and thought they were capable of presenting classroom training. First, they had not been inspectors for a long while and were not up on any of the current techniques - so they attempted to teach the wrong thing. Second, the classroom training consisted of two days doing a stand-up lecture followed by a quiz. Inspection is a hands-on job. Classroom theory was useless to them. And to top it all off, the "trainers" wrote the quiz answers on the board during the exam!

The bottom line - the inspectors could not do their jobs, so the engineers had to do assist them as well as teach them the fundamental inspection techniques. We developed a team-based approach to train the inspectors via hands-on methods. It was an immediate success. Inspectors loved it - we taught them to identify the tasks and write the step-by-step training modules. In the process they learned how to do the job! They also had training materials for the first time ever. And almost any inspector was then able to use the simple modules and train new inspectors. We didn't need "official" trainers. And what it did for morale was worth more than the skill they attained. The result was that other departments within the company adopted the program instead of relying on Employee Training and Development.

We tried first to work WITH the Employee Training and Development people. They were not interested and in fact complained about it! So, we took the ball and ran with it. That was in 1990. Today, the training is still done from WITHIN QC. The Engineering group works to keep quiet about it now because of the opposition within HR.

The company soon offered the program to customers. We found the exact same situation there. For example, one airline in 1995 had no structured training for the engine mechanics - if you can imagine that! It was indeed a horrifying picture. The training department, we discovered, didn't even know the problem existed. In fact there was no mechanic training on anything. There again, the affected department took over all the mechanics' training and did the team-based program using their mechanics to do all the development.

Another example - I later took a job as a human factors psychologist with another company to work on analyzing pilot training in cockpit management skills. They had tried using their training department people but the pilots hated it and started refusing to take part. So we introduced the pilots to that same approach and they developed the soft skills training. They immediately embraced it because they had ownership of the training.

It is possible to be located in the training department or HR but only if you "live" in the environment that you serve. Often training and HR have too many other responsibilities to do to be fully attuned to what the customer needs.

Hope that at least helps clarify my earlier opinions. Hope your endeavor turns out well. As other readers said, you have a golden opportunity to make a real impact on the entire company.

Your situation with the four different departments each of whom have distinct regulations would be perfect for a team-based approach. And believe me, you would be a hero! You could set up employee teams in each department, teach them a simple way to do task analysis and how to write modules on the tasks. They would in turn be able to use the modules to train everyone else. Nestle used the system and found that it was the perfect answer for updating their Standard Operating Procedures as well as creating new policies. They did both at the same time - developed training and SOPs. Your teams could develop all the compliance documents and training themselves.

You would be busy full time running the training programs in all four departments. You would probably want a couple of other trainers or facilitators to help you. Once you get teams up and running, teams usually don't stop when the initial training is done. They are constantly identifying new tasks and new training needs. They also identify many organizational issues that they can solve quite simply. It's amazing what teams can do. You can kill at least two birds with one stone - training and organizational performance improvement.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Good luck!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: KaliKo,