How to choose the perfect training partner?

As a young HR professional, you have done the Training Needs Identification (TNI) for your employees, understood the key development needs that you wish to drive for the year, realized there is some amount of HR budget that allows you to involve the consultants/vendors/partners into your organization for this but you do not know how to choose the perfect training partner? What would you do?

1. Understand the training market first

To buy a party dress, you can either go to the mall, visit the branded outlets, order online, visit the local boutique lady in your area, or visit Chandni Chowk. Depending on the time, money, desired quality you decide which option to choose. Similarly, scanning the market and understanding the training landscape is your first step in finding the best training partner.

There are big, medium, small companies providing corporate training in India. Again, in this space, there are companies that offer assessment tools/tests + coaching + targeted development programs apart from class room training. And there are some that offers only class room training. A lot of freelancers/independent consultants are also available who can pick up assignments and do a good job for you.

Cost is a major factor that determines the selection of the training partner. Depending on the seniority of the consultant who is working on the assignment, the cost for a good to excellent trainer could range between 20,000 INR to 90,000 INR for one day of training.  A freelancer could charge anywhere between 5,000 INR to 25,000 INR, depending on his volume of experience.

This is only the delivery cost. When you on-board a trainer, you would also expect them to design the course curriculum and delivery methodology. So depending on the depth of the pre-work and number of hours being spent there, an additional per day cost needs to be included in your budget.

LinkedIn would tell you there are more than ten thousand training companies in India. It’s a huge market out there and it’s a mammoth task for any HR professional to figure out who does what. But that needs to be your first step. Preparing a list of potential 10-15-20 companies that you could speak to.

What we’ve done for you is, identified 25 names of training companies which a lot of big companies are using these days. Please note, we are not saying they are the top 25 training companies in India. It’s just a reference list for you to start off with if you have nothing else available with you.   list-of-training-companies.xlsx

2. Know exactly what you want

Your need to go to a training partner needs to be crystal clear. You want to improve communication skills for your junior cadre employees? You need to prepare a leadership pipeline in your middle level managers? You need to build strategic orientation in your top leadership team? What do you want? Because knowing what you want is still easy in the learning & development space, knowing how to go about it is difficult. And that’s where a training partner can spin you.

Why don’t you add in personal one on one coaching? Why don’t we first run an assessment tool? Why don’t we first define the competencies? Why don’t you use our gamification tools for this? They have a bag full of gems, you would need to know exactly which one fits into your crown.

What we’d recommend is, if you are really new to the L&D space, then do some preliminary scan-the-market kind of meetings. Just call vendors and tell them this is what the problem internally is and let them come up with possible solutions. Dig deep into why they are suggesting that particular solution. Once you have figured out the possible solutions for your development needs, weigh them out basis the time, quality, cost and possible outcome.

3. Picking the right partner

Now you the market and you know the solutions, here comes the last part of how to choose the training partner? Here are some of the most important things you need to keep in mind while deciding this:

• Ability to cater to all levels of hierarchy: Not all training partners have the ability to cater to all the leadership levels of your organization. Some are good for only junior management and some have only leadership expertise. However, there are also a good bunch of training companies whose repertoire includes handling all levels. Most companies use a mixed bag approach where they have different training companies for different levels. But if you want to work with only one, which makes more sense, you need to evaluate their expertise accordingly.

• Extent of customization: The extent to which the training company is willing to customize training content for your organization. Most companies are ready to customize content. But here’s the catch 22 situation all L&D professionals face. Training partner would say I can customize if I know the company dynamics better, for which I need to spend more time in pre work, which is cost to the company, which the L&D person cannot give since he has limited budget. A possible work around is that the internal HR team conducts the pre work for the partner. They take FGDs, interviews, case studies etc. which can help the training partner understand the internal situation better and hence customize content well.

• Taking reference checks: It is advisable to ask around in your network if they have worked with your identified training partner. You should also ask the training partner to provide you 3-5 client numbers with whom you could take a reference check. And don’t worry, reference checks in these cases are much more informative than in case of candidate reference checks. HR to HR there’s a lot of camaraderie and in our experience such calls have generated good pointers for us to take a call for or against a training partner. But you need to frame your questions well for such calls. Ask pretty direct questions and let it not be a whether they are good or not kind of call.

• Meeting the trainers: Your interaction would mostly be with the founder or the Business Development team of the training company. Insist on meeting the trainer as well. You are a HR person; you would be able to assess whether the trainer can do justice to your employee’s needs or not. Most companies would be able to replace trainers if you haven’t found this one good, so be a little patient with them and pick their best trainer.

 We hope this would give you some idea of how to go about picking the best (behavioral) training partner for your organization. If you are an experienced L&D professional, who has managed to read till here, we’ll be happy to know if this is how you select your training vendors. Do leave in your comment and we’ll be glad to add your tips in our write up.

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