In-house and outsourced training programs, in combination, can benefit your company.

When Wisniefski had a problem. His new venture, VendorSeek, was beginning to grow and take on more staff. The company is the epitome of using the Internet as a business tool – it serves as a connection between businesses and pre-screened vendors – and as such is rooted in new models of sales and business relationships. The problem came in when VendorSeek needed a training program for its new employees.

As a small company, VendorSeek didn’t have a lot of resources to create an in-house training program, so Wisniefski looked outward. “I tried on a couple of occasions,” he says. “We tried to do that, one, on the customer service side and, two, we tried to outsource for both customer service and sales.”

After all the sessions were over and the employees were sent out to do their jobs, Wisniefski says, all he really ended up learning was that the outside training firms didn’t understand his business at all. “In both cases, we found that while you could kind of get the broad stroke of the process, we found it difficult to have that mindset that we have internally,” he says.

Because VendorSeek does most of its business over the Internet, the old-school sales techniques and tricks didn’t carry over very well. Wisniefski says employees were often left with more questions after the training sessions than before they started. “As we came to find out, [the training company] didn’t really understand the nuances of the new form of selling,” he says. “They were really geared toward the old [mindset]. We found that a lot of the tutoring they were doing didn’t translate well into the type of business that we had. They really didn’t address that nowadays you can maintain the sales process beyond cold calling.”

What’s more, Wisniefski says he discovered the company he hired to handle VendorSeek’s customer service training was approaching it by the book – literally. “[It was] to the point where anybody on the other end is going to know that it’s really scripted,” he says. “We were looking to gain, ‘Here’s how to address people when they are really upset.’”

The outside company’s approach of training employees to answer 10 stock questions with scripted responses didn’t fit with VendorSeek’s small-company culture.

Combination Approach
Although VendorSeek’s experience sounds like a nightmare scenario for a smaller company trying to establish an identity and enhance its staff’s performance, it should really serve as a cautionary tale. You might think you’ll have to do all the training yourself, but a combination of the two approaches is usually the best strategy, according to Rita McGrath, associate professor at Columbia University Business School. McGrath has helped develop and teach training programs for companies including Ericsson, Nokia and Microsoft.

It might be tempting to shun the cost and uncertainty of outsourcing your training and go completely in-house, McGrath says, but unless you’re willing to do everything yourself, it might not be worth it. “The difficulty you have with an in-house system is that unless you’re a very large company, it will be tough to keep the faculty busy,” she says.

Wisniefski says he decided the high cost of outsourcing did not yield a good return, so he chose to roll up his sleeves and tackle the training situation himself. “I decided it would be worth me putting aside whatever day-to-day I had to do,” he says. “I went back and looked at where our problem areas were and tried to come up with some kind of outline on how to address them. We did a kind of training manual which, quite frankly, we’ve tweaked.”

VendorSeek had only 15 employees when it had its negative experience with outsourced training, and now the company is double the size, Wisniefski says. He says the do-it-yourself approach has worked out well so far, despite taking management’s time away from other duties. “Obviously, cost is an issue,” he says. “Even though you do take time away from myself and other managers, the value over the course of time is greater because employees have less questions.”

Comparison Shopping
Wisniefski says VendorSeek employees receive a consistent message throughout their training now, but McGrath says companies can achieve that even with using third-party trainers. Companies simply have to do some vetting of the vendors and supplement the basic training with more substantive in-house programs. “What companies are leaning toward today is using more of what I call ‘off-the-shelf training’ for more basic stuff,” she says.

“Off the shelf” implies a supermarket, and there are a wide variety of options for a company to choose from for outsourcing training. Just like grocery shopping, McGrath says, companies should always be careful to read labels before making a selection. “You want to look at the qualities of the people doing the training,” she says, adding that qualified trainers are usually certified coaches.

When asked which aspect of training is best handled in-house, McGrath says specialized training that’s specific to a company and its culture, along with leadership development, are two categories. “What many really good companies do is they have their own executives doing the [leadership] training.”

Switch It Up
When putting together an in-house component to your company’s training program, McGrath says to take care not to wind up boring your employees to death. “Basing a course around lecturing is usually a bad idea,” she says. “What we found is that you really need to mix it up to let the learning have the maximum impact. We know that adults learn best when they’re talking to each other.”

Peer coaching and small group discussions are easy ways to make training more interactive and avoid long, droning lectures, McGrath adds. As to what time of day is most productive for such training sessions, McGrath says to avoid the temptation to make it a lunch meeting. “I’m a big fan of small group work after lunch because that’s when everyone’s sleepy, so [training] changes the focus,” she says. “I tend to let people let lunch be lunch.”

No matter whether the training is done by the company itself or through an outside vendor, follow-through is essential, according to McGrath. “One of the most common mistakes is they send people off to the training program, but they don’t think about what’s going to happen when they come back,” she says.