Learning & development options for small organisations

If you are working in a small organisation, you may not have an L&D or training colleague or team to turn to for advice or support. Another related challenge is that you may find that you don’t have the time yourself to put into training or L&D that your organisation requires.  However, there are a number of options available to enable you to gain access to alternative sources of advice, support or additional people resources:

1. Use an external consultant

A very simple way of addressing these gaps is to work with an external consultancy either a small, possibly one-person, organisation or a larger consultancy. One of the advantages of working with consultants is that you can contract with consultants either for a one-off particular service such as designing and delivering a particular learning programme or develop a wider and longer term relationship depending on what best suits the needs of your organisation. For example, you may wish to contract a consultant to work with your organisation and provide the same range of services that an internal L&D specialist would but for a set number of days a month.

2. Retain a training management and administration service

A different option would be to contract a training management and administration service who would undertake a range of L&D services on your behalf. This could include identifying relevant external and internal course providers, negotiating fees and managing the administration of participants’ attendance on these programmes. This would give you access both to specialist advice and also provide additional resources to support the administration of L&D activities.

3. Combine with other organisations in a consortium

Another approach is to join with other organisations to form a consortium to enable you to benefit from increased purchasing power and to share resources and expertise. You could look to see if there are any relevant consortia already established in your organisational sector (e.g., the Charities Learning Consortium) or in your locality. If such a consortium doesn’t exist, you could gather relevant organisations to form your own.

Alternatively, you could form a partnership arrangement with one or more other organisations in a similar way to enable you to benefit from reduced costs when working with external suppliers of training or to share places in programmes organised internally.

4. Networks

Tap into existing networks that your organisation is eligible to join such as business sector organisations, local Chambers of Commerce or any professional bodies that are relevant for groups of staff employed by your organisation. Many of these organisations will provide opportunities for training or other professional development.

5. Subscription based services

Some organisations provide access to L&D programmes or specific types of L&D services (e.g., e-learning or video based learning or online books) or support materials to make it easier to design your own courses as a subscription service. This can be a cost-effective approach to accessing a wide range of learning resources to enable a range of learning needs to be met for staff from different disciplines.

6. Government supported schemes

Another option is to research current government support for training within employers. At the present time there is funding available to support apprenticeships and it is possible to recruit an apprentice through a training organisation, where the training organisation takes responsibility for organising the apprentice’s formal training and also for their recruitment.

7. Develop internal coaches

A very different approach is to invest in the development of internal coaches within your organisation. These could be line managers or team leaders, or peer coaches draw from amongst the staff. The idea is to develop the coaching skills of these individuals who would then coach other staff throughout the organisation. This builds the internal resources of the organisation and gives considerable flexibility for meeting future learning needs for the organisation.

8. Make use of informal opportunities

This involves supporting employees to take greater responsibility for their own development and that of their fellow employees by providing resources, methods and technology to enable learning from each other.

For example, this could involve employees creating short video ‘how to’s’ to share particular skills or knowhow on specific tasks or it could involve a team action review of a particular project to identify what worked well and what could be further improved. There are many forms of informal learning that can be made use of within organisations