Can anyone help me. I have been given a small training budget to manage, however the Chief Executive often gives me details of training events and conferences with names of staff who should be attend. This makes it difficult to plan the use of the budget? Any ideas?
Janice Carter
One Response
Been there!
Hi Janice,
I know from experience just how frustrating this can be.
What I did was to split the budget that I had into segments. So there was a sum for ‘Sponsored Events’ as in requests from the top. There was also a sum for TNA/Performance Appraisal Follow Up, and a sum for Training Projects. Each sum was allocated on the basis of need. For example we needed to upgrade the software from Lotus to Microsoft Office and key members of staff throughout the organisation needed to be trained – this was one of our projects, it ended up taking the entire years project budget. From TNA there was a need for the call centre to have additional sales skills, from the TNA / Perf Budget. And the Marketing Director wanted one of his team to go to a specific expensive conference – sponsered training budget.
When each budget was empty it was empty.
Any additional training sort under the category needed a visit to the CEO to sanction, and sometimes there wasn’t any extra to be had.
Treat training as a business within a business and it gets respected more.
Regards,
Megan