Cost Reduction and Control Best Practices: The Best Ways for a Financial Manager to Save Money, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6

Training and Development Costs

BEST PRACTICES

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT COSTS

As training budgets get tighter, it is useful to have a look at what other training managers do to control training department costs. The results of IOMA’s Training Management and Cost Control Questionnaire show that respondents are relying on a variety of strategies to rein in expenditures.

Variety Pack

In the past, one or two clear leaders typically emerged as the most effective cost-control tactics. This year, training managers are taking advantage of a variety of approaches to the problem, embracing everything from outsourcing to blended learning programs. Overall, online learning and video or teleconferencing joined pretraining needs assessments as training managers’ top cost-control strategies this year (see Exhibit 6.1).

Exhibit 6.1 Top Training Cost-Control Strategies, by Company Size

Nearly half (43.8%) of respondents included training needs assessments prior to adding training programs in their top five most successful cost-control strategies—an eminently reasonable strategy that eliminates unnecessary programs by identifying when, and if, training is the solution. Once the need for training is established, about one-third of study participants use either online learning (including custom, off-the-shelf, and hosted) (34.4%), video or teleconferencing in place of or in addition to instructor-led ...