This month Dan Heany started off a good debate when he wrote: “I am genuinely interested in your thoughts on the following: The downturn in the economy will lead to a reduction in the amount of training and development being undertaken and will drive down prices of training interventions. Discuss, please.”

Anne Nash replied: “I think this is certainly an interesting topic and one where there are no real answers, only educated speculation. Much has been made of the UK ‘credit crunch’ and what we are already finding is that clients have to seriously consider what they can do to protect themselves from any potential fallout. They have to look closely at their training plans to consider how they might do things differently or even delay things until they can be more certain how the current economy might have an impact on their business.

“This has not necessarily been a negative thing for us as a training business. We have found that these new attitudes are generating fresh and practical ideas for delivering training in a more cost-conscious way. As a result, there is an increasing trend for ownership of training and development being pushed back down the line to the sharp end of operations and it is the line managers who are once again being tasked with ensuring the competence of their workforce; a workforce that not only ‘does a good job’ but is focused on what they can do to continually improve performance. ”

Tim Royds replied to Anne’s comments: “If the current economic climate (or perceptions of it) are making budget holders think twice about how to make development initiatives more effective, let’s hope that the current conditions stay as they are for a while. I am, frankly, appalled at the money that’s thrown at training to solve problems which would be solved more cost effectively by a change in management practices (such as how performance is measured), an evolution of the process to make it more efficient or line manager coaching. I wonder if ‘training’ is purchased so people have the ability to tick a box and show they’ve done something.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for their annual appraisal and any incentive payment to be based on how effective the ‘training’ they’ve purchased has been. I believe we’d then find purchasers a little more enthusiastic to make return on investment a key issue when considering investment.

“If there is a downturn in demand for training, it will be interesting to observe which providers reduce price in order to gain orders. I suspect that they will be the ones who are unable or unwilling to demonstrate that what they provide adds value. I also suspect that the customers who purchase because they are cheap will be measuring ‘success’ by measures such as average cost per attending head rather than what attending employees are able to do and achieve afterwards. Frankly they are welcome to them! We qualify our prospects in the same way as prospects compare us to alternative suppliers – and prospects who are solely driven by cost are simply not our market.

“Low quality providers who care little about how much the customer is truly helped don’t do a lot for the profile of our profession.”

For more on this topic visit the archives.

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