Seven critical tips to make it successful and long-lasting
Many companies today are interested in shifting some of their training from external vendors to internal talent. The rationale is clear:
- Organizations acknowledge the value of knowledge accumulated by their own people.
- It is in their interest to maintain, further develop and spread this knowledge.
- It is in their interest to keep this valuable knowledge inside the organization.
It is this rationale that brings organizations to invest in internal programs, aimed at identifying, recruiting and developing a pool of internal professionals as internal trainers/facilitators. Unfortunately, in many cases these programs rise and fall with little impact relative to their vast potential.
In the last 3 years I’ve been given the opportunity to build such a program in the company for which I work. It has been an amazing journey that resulted in a global group of about 70 internal facilitators coming from very different professional backgrounds (Business leadership, HR, Marketing, Technology), all of whom are internally developed as facilitators, delivering workshops in addition to their daily roles and making a huge impact by supporting peoples’ professional and personal development, as well as the company’s on-going change and strategy.
From this experience, I have identified 7 tips that I find are critical for successful development of an internal training force:
- Identify your stakeholders– As with any program that crosses multiple disciplines within the company, an internal facilitation program has many stakeholders (HR mgmt., Corporate Learning and OD department leads, Learning and OD managers, business focal points). Identify them, involve them and make it everyone’s baby. It is not only political, a truly collaborative approach would result in a much more accurate process, taking into consideration the many aspects of such a program and ensuring smooth operation and effective utilization of group deliveries.
- Win-Win-Win. The beauty of such programs is that everyone benefits: the facilitators, their trainees, the organization. Design the process in such a way that those wins will be transparent to all sides.
- Learning means business. The group’s documents and published materials should look and feel as attractive and dynamic as the group truly is. Partner with your ICOMM, invest in smart branding and use different internal marketing channels. Your facilitators should feel proud of their activities, and their trainees should feel privileged for the opportunity to learn with them.
- Professionalism – When it comes to the qualification path of internal facilitators, don’t cut back on costs. It will return the investment right from the first year of activity and exponentially from the second. Use internal and external knowledge to design and implement an ongoing state of the art certification path for your facilitators. It would mean the world to them, and would reflect in their level of engagement, the quality of their deliveries and the feedback of participants.
- Community – Invest time and money in building the internal group of facilitators as an elite community of professionals. Employees in large organizations are longing for such opportunities to connect with others around a common goal, which goes beyond than their day to day business targets. The stronger the community, the more engaged and committed the members. Off-sites, recognition events and exclusive learning opportunities will do the trick, and the ROI for the investment would again be quick and impressive!
- Versatility – Try to collect a group as versatile as you can, in terms of professional background, levels in the organizational hierarchy, geography and even personality. Enable and promote cross pollination and make it a culture to learn and be developed with one another.
- Last but definitely not least – leave enough room for fun in every team activity. People like to share their knowledge, to give and receive friendly and constructive feedback from one another, to get better at what they do, and to take part in other peoples’ growth. You just need to let them!
A final note – creating such programs shouldn’t be a replacement for the usage of vendors who bring valuable external knowledge into the organization. I believe that any organization that aspires to be a learning organization should facilitate a healthy flow of knowledge coming from outside the organization as well as from within. The thing is, bringing knowledge from the outside was never a big challenge, while retaining, moving and utilizing internal knowledge is a constant effort—one that usually involves leadership attention, focused efforts and in many cases a cultural change. Building groups of internal facilitators is a big step toward this direction and a growing trend among learning and OD leaders. If you choose to go that path I encourage you to use the above mentioned 7 tips that have worked for me.
Good luck!