How does your organization view using external resources for training and development?

Our reader poll today asks: How does your organization view using external resources for training and development?

• We almost exclusively use external providers for training/development – 8%
• We mostly use external providers for training/development – 23%
  
• We sometimes use external providers for training/development – 42%
• We sometimes use external providers for training/development – 42%
• We rarely use external providers for training/development – 19%
• We don’t ever use external providers for training/development – 8%

Reliance on External Experts. 73% of you go outside your own walls for help with training and development. For the 27% who rarely or never seek external help with training, ask yourself why. If it’s budget related or you don’t invest in your people, consider making those investments if you want to retain them. If it’s the belief of “we know this better than external providers do,” challenge that assumption. Sure, you likely know internal products, processes, and systems better than external providers and in those cases you’re better off training those skills. But for more common skills like communication, leadership, and problem solving, consider whether or not you truly have deep expertise on those topics and on training people how to build those skills. Just because you know it doesn’t mean you can teach it. And when you factor in the true cost of building internal training and development resources as well as the potential quality differential with external experts, you might find the business case for doing it yourself is actually more expensive than going outside your own walls.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.