To follow on from our blog looking at the pros and cons of in-house training – here is a look at the advantages and disadvantages of public scheduled courses. Hopefully by reading them both you can get a good balanced view of the facts and apply them to your situation in order to make the best decision for you and your company.
The Advantages of Public Scheduled Training include:
Less Administration – There is less aspects to organise than with In-House training as the training company will sort it out for you. Location, equipment, the actual trainer and normally refreshments are all handled by the company. Also if you use us, we will handle all booking forms and cancellations – leaving you with even less to do!
External Networking – Public scheduled training allows your employees to mix with and talk to people from other companies and backgrounds. This can be useful for networking as useful contacts can be made that could be used at a later date. The other big advantage is that people from other companies and backgrounds will likely offer different approaches and viewpoints – therefore giving even more to consider in the training session and more to learn. It is always useful to keep up with best practice in the industry.
Lack of Distractions – Once you have sent your employees on a public scheduled course, they are free from any responsibilities of their usual day to day activities. Employees simply won’t be able to be dragged out the training if something comes up as they won’t be in the building. Therefore you know all of your employees will have nothing to stop them from spending all day and all of their attention on the training. Also, a break from familiar surroundings can help invigorate people and help them focus.
Variance – An external trainer on a public scheduled course who has little ties or knowledge of your company may be able to give a fresh perspective to an issue as they haven’t got the bias that extra information can give you. They will likely do things and suggest things that are completely different to what you are used to in your company that can help broaden your understanding of a subject. This can then be transferred back into the company.
The Disadvantages of Public Scheduled Training include:
More Expensive – Although there is usually a very convenient option of public scheduled training available to your company regarding location, sometimes there may be travel involved and perhaps even a need for accommodation. These cost money and will raise the cost per delegate of sending them on training as well as increase the time it takes for training as a day or 2 extra may be needed for travel. If you are sending your employees on ad-hoc, low scale training you may also not benefit from bulk buying discounts as much – again, raising the cost. Finally it costs more than in-house training as you are using the company’s room, equipment etc.
Cancellations – If you use public scheduled courses, there is also the risk that it may be cancelled. Normally this is down to low attendance. Therefore it can sometimes be very hard to get training on more obscure subjects or older software. This can be particularly annoying if you have organised everything around the idea of the training being on one date – to find out it has been moved back a month.
Generalised Approach – Trainers teaching public scheduled courses know they will have employees from various different job roles and industry sectors. Therefore they have to teach the content and in the style that will please the majority. The training is therefore not as specific or tailored as in-house training and whilst applicable, may be harder to apply it in your business environment as less time can be dedicated to specific internal issues.
Considerations
Location – More specific public scheduled courses or possibly older courses may well be provided by fewer trainers and therefore your choice of location may be smaller. If your company is located somewhere unusual then this will be a bigger problem still. Therefore if the training can be sourced locally and will require minimal travel and therefore also accommodation, costs can be kept to a minimum. However if the public scheduled training needs to held a distance away from your employees then it may be cheaper to bring one trainer to teach your employees in-house then to send a group of employees to the provider.
Quantity – As alluded to in the previous point, the amount of employees you have for each training is important. If you only have 1-3 employees who need to attend the training, then public scheduled training can be ideal as providing travel for just 3 people can be relatively cheap whilst holding an in-house session could prove expensive per candidate. However if you have a large group of people then travel can be expensive and hard to organise – and is therefore better suited to in-house training.
Subject – The more unusual subjects or possibly more outdated subjects such as older software are often hard to run in a public scheduled course as they can be cancelled due to lack of numbers. Therefore, holding these in-house will guarantee you that the training will run. However, common subjects will often have a considerably large amount of dates which will fill up almost every time so you can be safe in the knowledge your public scheduled course will run.
Variance – Even if public scheduled training is the most appropriate method for one training need, do not always disregard in-house training for the future. Varying an employee’s training between the 2 types is important as it allows them to obtain the previously mentioned benefits, but sometimes in-house training could prove to be cheaper, easier to organise, more guaranteed to happen and more tailored for your company as you can read here. Basically there isn’t a correct choice or one size fits all approach. Each situation is different.
