How to persuade your management board to invest in training

If you are recommending more training for your employees, or are thinking about setting up an apprenticeship or graduate programme, your management team will take a hard-headed look at your business case for investment in people.

Showing the widest business benefits will add weight to your arguments. Here are five things you should consider then tailor to your needs and situation to demonstrate the benefits of training when constructing your business case…

2. TRAINING WILL HELP YOU MEET YOUR BUSINESS GOALS

Show your board how the training will help to achieve their business goals. For example if a goal is to become more innovative in your sector, personal development can embed business behaviours that allow this kind of thinking to flourish. And if a goal is a reduction in health and safety issues, training can create and embed a safety-first workplace culture.

Training can help focus on the skills and behaviours that you are seeking at all levels of your organisation. The right training helps develop, reinforce and support all kinds of behaviours plus the hard and soft skills your business wants. Linking the desired outcomes of training to business goals is your first step towards creating a thought through business case.

Many employers find that running apprenticeships or graduate programmes gives them the opportunity to tailor learning courses to the critical skills required in their organisation and spread the organisation's culture from the moment an employee joins.

For example, as part of its apprenticeship scheme, Stagecoach uses one element of the course it runs with The Outward Bound Trust to embed risk assessment, using Stagecoach's 'Safe Systems of Work' processes and behaviours.

4. TRAINING AIDS PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE AND HELPS YOU SPOT TALENT

Many industries are currently looking at an aging workforce – with information and experience centred on a group of long-term employees who are getting ever-closer to retirement age. The result is a potential skills gap on the horizon. How will you ensure that their replacements will have the experience and problem-solving abilities of an employee who has grown their knowledge over many years in a wide variety of situations?

If you don't have in place an effective method for mentoring and passing on knowledge, your company might find itself in difficulties. Gather evidence by auditing to see if you will have a future skills gap. Your evaluation will highlight any future risks to your business.²

Creating a good relationship between older and younger workers is crucial for getting the best out of everyone and developing an atmosphere of sharing and learning. Intergenerational learning can help foster an environment where everyone can benefit from each other’s knowledge. In turn, this helps form an agile workforce that can deal with difficulties by drawing on the experience and innovative thinking of all ages to solve problems and overcome setbacks.

Training can also help you spot talent and develop the leaders and managers of the future, aiding succession planning at the highest level too. Make sure your business case shows the future benefits as well as the current ones.

5. TRAINING BROADENS THE SKILLS BASE – WITH BOTH HARD AND SOFT SKILLS

The value of the hard skills needed to perform a job are obvious. Historically, these were the skills that employers focused on. But employees increasingly need a range of soft skills to make them truly effective in the modern world of work.

Knowing how to work as part of a team or communicate well with colleagues, bosses and customers can be vital to success. 77% of employers believe that soft skills are just as important as hard skills. While 16% of employers said soft skills are more important than hard skills when evaluating candidates for a job.³ Developing these soft skills in your team is vital to the smooth and effective running of a business. Can you show an unmet need for this kind of training, for example, in the results of your annual appraisals?

If you can include some data to show why training will be valuable and how your investment will add to the bottom line then you should have no problem getting your business case signed off.

Notes and Further Reading

1. CIPD: Aligning business and learning (pdf)
2. Harvard Business Review: Is the aging workforce really creating your staff shortages
3. PR Newswire: Companies say a majority of companies say soft skills are just as important as hard skills