Selecting an appropriate external consultant for HR training in your organisation is a very vital issue and needs utmost attention of the concerned people.
More and more organisations are pruning their human resources and or training departments and taking help of service providers. A large number of service providers are in market.Hence, it is very important for the clients to fix criterion and adhere to same, for choosing the right consultant for the right job, including training.
Below are given the guidelines for selecting an external consultant for HR training.
1. Identification of the sources for consultant for HR training
At the outset, the client should try to identify the internal source in the organisation itself. These may be managers, other human resource professionals, to find out if they know a good training company or a training consultant. You may go through the website of consultants or training providers also.
If some consulting organisation was hired by the client earlier, their opinion may also be taken on it. Industry publications may also help.
2. Freezing your own requirements for HR training
The client or organisation itself must know in clear-cut terms, what does it want. The rapidly changing job-requirements and market scenario must be kept in view. If the client organisation itself does not know, what it wants, how the external or internal training consultants will help. Defining the role of consultant must be done by the client itself.
Usually, the training is desired by the clients to improve some of their existing problems like lack of team-building spirit, communication skills, interpersonal skills or any other aspect, which is proving to be an irritant in increasing the productivity of the organisation.
Ripples Learning carries out surveys for assessment of the problems of the organisations. It conducts training in 3 stages, pre-training assessment, designing of the training and its delivery based on assessment, along with post-training -impact-evaluation. In fact, we also do have a unique software through which we measure the effectiveness of training imparted on real time basis.
3. Selection Criterion
Selection criterion must be frozen to pick the best-fit external consultant for your organisation. Their level of competence, knowledge and experience in the industry similar to your organisation, along with credibility in the market may be included in the selection criterion. Quality of training material, the degree of professionalism, list of established organisations seeking their training, locations may also be considered along with the financial aspects. The list may be very long and should be frozen by client itself before setting the process in motion.
4. Interviewing the external consultants for HR training
Interviewing or interacting through phone the future consultant or service provider is the best practice. During this, you may ask them to send their profile, training and client details etc. on the criterion as finalised by the client organisation. Some other questions which may be asked are, if they have worked earlier for similar organisations, their most challenging jobs, etc.
5. Deciding the full action plan
After a particular external consultant for HR training has been selected, a full action plan may be decided consisting of the following
- The type of training to be imparted
- The delivery date, place and size of the audience
- Methodology to receive the feedback
- List of deliverable
- Presentation aid required during the training
- Financial terms and conditions
6.Review of Feedback after the conclusion of training
The author is of the opinion that a two-way feedback should be taken from both the external consultant and the client. They should give the feedback on each other, after conclusion of training. Presently, the onus is on external consultant only.
Ripples Learning is a globally reputed organisation, devoted to offering state of art training to multi-nationals, private and public sector entities and IT giants in India and abroad. Please send your requirements to us, through email on support@rippleslearning.com.
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