Custom training can provide the quickest, most affordable way of imparting the skills that a group of employees lacks. With a custom class, you can eliminate materials that aren't relevant to your organization. Let's say that you want your employees to take a MOC course that contains a module about Novell NetWare integration. If your company doesn't use NetWare and has no plans to do so, you can omit that module and the instructor can use that time to delve deeper into subjects of particular interest to your employees. For example, if your IT personnel are struggling with controlling the desktop environment within the company, instructors might spend additional time on Microsoft Group Policy.
A custom class also lets your employees network with one another in a context that promotes improvement to your IT infrastructure. One employee might ask a question about a task that he or she is struggling with only to discover that someone else in the class has already developed a better method for performing that task. Incidents such as this are common in custom training classes. Because everyone works at the same organization, students are more likely to ask questions and talk openly about their working environment, which can have a positive impact on the training experience.
Although custom classes offer many advantages over traditional classroom training, they do have disadvantages. For example, setting up a custom class might be more of a hassle than simply sending workers to a public class. However, this need not be the case. In the past few years, a couple of changes have made arranging custom classes much easier. First, Microsoft and other major vendors have made their courseware more suitable for use in custom training. Omitting modules or adding different material to a standard class has never been easier. Second, most training providers have a lot more experience in setting up custom training classes than they did several years ago. A good training provider should make the process of customizing a training class virtually painless.
Custom training is certainly an option you'll want to consider, especially if you have many employees who need training in a given area. However, if the number of employees you need to train is small—say, three or four—custom training might not work as well because the cost of the class for so few students might be too great. In this situation, an alternative is mentor training.
Mentor training. With mentor training, an organization taps the knowledge of individuals within the company to provide the training. The benefits you can reap from this type of training can be huge. First, people outside your organization will probably never understand your company or your IT infrastructure as well as your employees do. Therefore, by having a coworker train your employees, you no longer need to set aside time for an outsider to become familiar with what happens within your company.
Second, by using an internal employee to perform the training, you can often save a significant amount of money. Contracting a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) might cost from $1000 to $3000 per day, depending on the circumstances. If you replace that outside trainer with an internal one for a typical 5-day class, you can save $10,000 or more. However, don't forget to tally the cost of tying up the employee who will teach the class.
Third, the instructor usually benefits by teaching the class, so using an internal employee lets you maximize the benefits that training can bring. Instructors gain a better grasp of the material and often expand their knowledge through the questions students ask during class. Over time, this internal training benefit can prove substantial.
Although mentor training might appeal to some organizations, it won't work in all environments. Small companies often don't have employees with the expertise or knowledge that's necessary for this approach to be feasible. Individuals who are knowledgeable enough to teach might not have the skills to present the information effectively. Companies must screen teaching candidates to be certain that they possess adequate training and communication skills.
Choosing the Best Training Method for Your Organization
Choosing the best training method for your company can be time-consuming, but it's time well spent. For example, a company with 500 employees who receive an average of 80 hours of training a year must pay for a total of 40,000 hours of training annually. Devoting at least 100 hours to the process of choosing appropriate, cost-effective training for these individuals makes sense, yet most companies spend only a fraction of that time investigating training options. If you make choosing high-quality, relevant training a top priority for your organization, you're likely to see the benefits from that training increase dramatically. Don't be surprised to see productivity and job satisfaction soar as a direct result of more effective training.