Training: overview

This Smart Buyer guide details and examines the elements and actions required to provide effective and appropriate training, learning and development provision.

It looks in detail at at the general issues that affect all purchasing decisions in training, regardless of the topic.

Before making purchasing decisions, training, learning and development managers, or whoever is responsible for buying training services, must ensure they are satisfying their organisation’s needs. This cannot be over-stressed as failure to do so successfully will have negative career outcomes, not only for the manager commissioning the training, but also for the employees of the organisation.

The core content of the training module is a four-step guide to planning your organisation’s training, learning and development. Once this is complete, we move on to selecting your training provider, with 10 rules to follow.

Next we look at two main models for paying for your training provision. We have also put together a brief review of some of the larger training providers; and we look at who owns the content of the training.