Blogpost

3 Genius Ways to Stretch Your Offsite Learning Budget

Cornerstone Editors

Feeling the pinch of budget shrink?

Then it's time to get creative when it comes to stretching your learning budget!

Many organizations already invest (and wisely so) in online, on-demand learning opportunities their people can take advantage of to develop in their careers and improve their individual, team and organizational performance. The return on investment (ROI) is clear.

But what about offsite, in-person learning opportunities, such as industry conferences, workshops or training boot camps?

Off site training and conferences can be exciting, engaging, fun ways for your people to learn from industry experts in a dynamic environment.

3 Ways to Stretch Your Offsite Learning Budget

And when it's all over? Sure, your people will head back to the office, ready to step up their own performance - but what about the rest of their team?

Let's be frank, not every organization has a robust learning or training budget. The good news is that there are simple - and genius! - ways to stretch your learning budget when it comes to offsite learning opportunities.

Here are three things you can do to stretch your learning budget:

Designate a learning champion

Make it easy to share learning insights

Choose multi-purpose learning opportunities

Ready? Let's get started!

1. Designate a Learning Champion

A learning champion is an employee responsible for attending specific workshops and conferences, who then shares what they've learned to the rest of their team and the organization, if applicable.

Managers can attend themselves or they can designate someone on their team to take on the learning champion responsibilities. Your managers can rotate the responsibility amongst their team members to keep the fair or they can make it a merit-based designation.

How this stretches your learning budget:

This strategy minimizes risk when you're exploring new learning opportunities that move the needle on performance.

By sending one person instead of the whole team, you're immediately reducing your spend by at least 50 percent. And, at the same time, you're increasing the ROI because your learning champion shares valuable information that will help improve the team's overall performance.

It's a great way to stretch your learning budget a bit further - done well, it's almost as though you were able to send the whole team!

*Added Bonus: Designating a learning champion pushes your people to think critically about why they're attending the offsite training opportunity, and then actively listen, learn and gather highly relevant information that they will bring back to their team.

2. Make it Easy to Share Learning Insights

Call upon your learning champion to recreate the learning or training experience when they return to the office. Get them to commit to presenting their key findings as part of the conditions allowing them to attend the workshop or conference.

This is where your people can really get creative to help stretch your learning budget!

Here are just a few examples of what they could do:

Incorporate their notes and photos into a short team presentation

Write up a series of blog posts

Host a lunch-and-learn

Send out briefing notes via email or to a group on your company intranet

Create materials they can use to coach their mentee(s)

Use their cell phone to shoot several short videos of themselves talking about key takeaways and post them on your intranet

Develop a new training manual or revise an existing one

Present a formal report to the C-Suite

The possibilities for sharing offsite learning are endless!

How this stretches your learning budget:

More of your people will get access to previously inaccessible offsite training in various formats. That information will live on in your organization far beyond that one day or weekend spent learning offsite. Spreading knowledge and best practices to others will also allow them to benefit from this information, even if it's just indirectly.

*Added Bonus: By actively participating in their own learning, your people will better understand the value of a co-learning culture and get them engaged by creating their own learning materials to share company-wide.

Your learning champions will start to fill your learning management system (LMS) with new, original or supporting content and can create entirely new learning playlists to help their peers learn and grow. By creating a culture of shared learning within your organization, your people will start contributing their own content, which can reduce your own LMS content costs.

3. Choose Multi-Purpose Learning Opportunities

Make your offsite excursions do double duty: Double up the learning and training opportunities your people pursue out of the office.

Choose high-value conferences and workshops offering a variety of specific training sessions that will not only teach your people key new skills but will also certify or re-certify them under industry compliance standards.

Seek out opportunities that allow them to earn Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credits.

How this stretches your learning budget:

By making your learning opportunities do double the work, you're truly maximizing the ROI of your learning and training budgets. You'll ensure more people will be working on value-driven projects while minimizing the amount of time spent away from critical projects.

*Added Bonus: Learning programs linked to business strategy see a 32 percent greater-than-average improvement in employee performance and a 38 percent greater-than-average improved employee productivity, according to a recent IDC PlanScape report on maximizing training investment

Your next steps: Take Action!

Sharing learning leads to action! It will get your people thinking about how they can leverage their learning to come up with solutions that address company problems. Encourage your people to go further and spearhead a new team or department initiative, start an internal club or working group, or propose a pilot project so that they not only share their offsite learning, they take action to demonstrate the ROI and drive positive business outcomes.

Now that you've learned something new, it's time for you to take action: Will you share this information with your peers? Will you designate a learning champion to represent your company at a workshop or conference?

It's time to put your people and teams in the driver's seat of their own development while staying connected to your organization's business strategy and goals. Start today... you can't afford not to!

Gerelateerde bronnen

Wilt u blijven leren? Bekijk onze producten, klantverhalen en de nieuwste branche-inzichten.

Nitto Denko Corporation: Unifying the training environment globally and promoting learning with excellent UX/UI

Klantverhaal

Nitto Denko Corporation: Unifying the training environment globally and promoting learning with excellent UX/UI

As a high-performance materials manufacturer, Nitto Denko continues to pioneer new applications, products and demand in various fields, expanding its market globally and achieving continuous growth. The company, which considers its people to be its most valuable asset, focuses on personnel development and on supporting challenges in their work and learning.

Plan een persoonlijk gesprek

Praat met een Cornerstone-expert over hoe wij kunnen helpen met de unieke behoeften van uw organisatie op het gebied van personeelsmanagement.

© Cornerstone 2024
Juridisch