Need to know couple of things, automatically, you will have budget.

1. What is the maximum amount ur company can invest in Training?
2. Need to know the stock of training needs across the organisation in terms of behavioural and functional training programmes?
3. What kind of infrastructure you would require? Do you have already or need to procure them?
4. Administration expenses like stationary, lunch/dinner etc.
5. Any outstation training - budget it separately. It would cost you huge.
6. And show some couple of points in the note to the management for getting
approved - how ROI would be counted and what would be short and long term
benefits, organisation would have.
7. To be at safer side, put your requirements a little more about 10-15%, so
management can give you the same or cut some. Still u will have the amount to manage the show.

That's all.

Dear Shaili, 

I had gone down aa experience in my organisation recently wherein I had budgeted for the Training Calendar 2009 - 2010 with 40 programmes in Sales and Behavioral, and top level leadership and Team building programmes across the organisation including 12 regional offices and the corporate office. 

I am just sharing the experience which may help you out. It was really a wonderful one. The budgeting would come into play once you are through with your need analysis and the number of persons you want to undergo the training.

The factors taken into consideration for the budgeting are :
- No. of programmes
- Professional charges for the faculty
- Venue for the programmes ( Internal / External )
- Travel of participants incase of outstation venue ( In this we analysed in terms of no. of persons in each region travelling to the nearest region for training and calculated the travel cost in terms economy class air fare )
- Travel of faculty incase they do not have a branch in the location
- Administrative costs ( Hiring of equipment's like OHP, LCD, Flip Charts etc. )
- Stationery cost ( Course materials, pencil, pad etc. )
- Miscellaneous cost ( out of the way expenditures reserve cost )
- Customisation cost if any ( All our sales programme were customised to the organisational level )

These are the parameters on which we analysed 3 consultancies and studied the way the budgeted varied before finalising.

Once we find the first cut module ( before customisation ) suitable to our needs we consider the consultant to be considered and therefore the budgeting is being done. Not much compromise was done the quality of the programmes but some factors like the regional presence of the consultancy was taken into consideration as we had good no. of people to be trained in the regions.

After studying the cost estimation with all the suitable consultants we shortlist again and brought it down to 2 after which we sit into a negotiation with the consultant in terms of costing and the service provided interms of no. of days of training we are giving to them.

This becomes the preliminary stage of budgeting on which we as HR closes the budget part and add 10 - 15 % of the emergency cost factor and tune it to the management as a part of the corporate budget for the Training.

Once approved we finalised the deals with the consultants by making a contract with them. Remember the management needs logical explanation and we supported them by the statistical analysis of 8 consultancies budgeting.

A regular tracking is done from programme to programme to check the proceedings in the budgetary limits.

Truly speaking about ROI is very difficult to calculate as there is no direct cost associated to measure this factor. This to some extent could only be through a strong feedback and Training evaluating mechanisms which over a period of time could let us know actual returns wherein each training is evaluated to the productive output added to the individual in accomplishment of his KRA's. This measure again has to be done in conjunction to the individual and his reporting manager with the facilitation done by HR.

We are in the process of doing the same as we had established a very strong feedback mechanism where in I am personally monitoring each and every training in terms of it's worth and effectiveness at the end of the day to get a good ROI. The phase of the measure has still not started off yet.

The concept of internal trainers has come up within the organisations. But to some extent I feel this must be restricted to the area of process training only and not move into functional and behavioral trainings as there would be a great deal of unacceptability factor among the employees. A functional training on a a project or a case basis where any individual has expertised and experience to share is fair enough as it is an occasional factor, but a regular calendar featuring the same may cause an acceptability issue if it is not the process training.

For process training to motivate the internal trainers you could create a certificate of learning wherein this is awarded to the individuals who had expertised in a particular process and is given the brand of a capacity to train others. This would create an elite group of trainers which would be more like a psychological advantage wherein each one would strive to enter the group. you need to decide on certain norms which would consider him to be certified. The no. of process in which an individual is certified could be considered as a parameter during performance development programmes.

I hope this may give you some idea on the same.

Srini

We had used two methodologies for the TNA for the organisation.

Method 1
There were a series of interaction with the Project Managers and co-ordinators which were carried down in project meetings to the programmers at a micro level. The meetings were not termed as meetings for TNA. The term TNA was never highlighted.The output of these were not the needs but the problems that effect their performance as an individual and the team. Based on the problems we identified certain capsule programmes which could be run as training modules to cater these needs for the problems arised. These were run through Project co-ordinators and BUH before finalisation.


Method 2
In this we used the Training assessment form used in the Performance Development Process and was also a continuation of the series of sales programme we had run last year. But in this case also the actual modules were run by the Business managers and customised to the organisational level before finalisation.

For our need analysis in the next year we are in the process of creating interaction groups with the Leadership group to asses the organisational vision and perform a gap analysis in terms of the requirement of the business and then identify the skills in which we need our people to expertise. This would be the stage where we would go in for some specialised trainings as the basics skills would be covered this year. Meanwhile those who are new, getting into the organisation would continue the process to undergo the basic training unless specifically driven by the organisational vision.

I hope this could add value to your ideas.