The ongoing training and development of today’s workforce will play a vital role in the growth, innovation and sustainability of the organization. LinkedIn Learning’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report, Building an agile future, found that the C-suite’s top priority is to motivate and engage employees. Because it is expected by the Report of the World Economic Forum 2021 that all workers around the world should be retrained by 2025 and by 2030, more than 85 million jobs are expected to go unfulfilled because there are not enough skilled people to hire them, organizations need to make talent development a top priority. Investments that business leaders make in their workforce today will save millions in the future.

In addition to turning staff into organizational superstars, learning and development (L&D) teams today must find ways to increase employee engagement in flexible work environments, create learning experiences that can serve as a recruiting tool, and move beyond knowledge transfer to truly expand capabilities and changing organizational culture. That’s a big (and expensive) task for any well-staffed L&D department, and an even bigger challenge if there’s a knowledge gap in your current L&D team or if you don’t have one at all.

To meet the current and growing demand for creating learning programs that deliver results, organizations must spend significant revenues on creating them and ensure that their L&D departments are adequately staffed. However, external trainers can save money by negating the cost of hiring and training new staff and the use of external trainers can lead to the significant behavioral changes required to see a lasting effect on learning outcomes. Here are three reasons why.

1. Expertise and Experience

External trainers bring a wealth of expertise and experience to which organizations have immediate access. According to a Training Industry, Inc. report, 87% of organizations that use external trainers say they do so to access specialized expertise and knowledge. “External trainers can provide a new perspective and expertise that may not be available internally. They can help organizations stay current and competitive.” External trainers and consultants have worked at various organizations and have experience with what works and what doesn’t. Because of their hands-on experience, they can offer valuable insights and advice on the most effective training methods and strategies in the volatile, complex and ambiguous environment organizations currently navigate. Their experience rolling out leadership development initiatives, both as a trainer and experienced leaders themselves, makes it easy to identify areas for improvement that they may have overlooked. By leveraging the expertise and experience of external trainers, organizations can save money, as much as 30%and by avoiding costly mistakes and implementing best practices. a Association for Human Resource Management Research showed that 72% of organizations say using external trainers and consultants helps them stay competitive.

Related: How Business Leaders Can Keep Employees Engaged

2. Customized training programs

There are five essential elements to creating a leadership development program that drives results: adaptable, measurable, integrated, applicable, and experiential. Tailor-made training helps the company’s employees to function more effectively and efficiently, leading to better results. To promote innovation, research by McKinsey urges L&D to stop creating one-off training that ticks the box but doesn’t drive long-term change, but “instead invest in leadership development experiences that are emotional and sensory and aha- create moments.” Learning experiences that are immersive and engaging become clearer and remembered for longer. Human behavior is not easily changed overnight, and tailor-made training programs, adapted to the unique requirements and goals of the organization, ensure that employees are more likely to remember and apply the information they learn in their work, which results in better performance and increased productivity. Using outside trainers in this regard can also help break through groupthink and stagnation, which has a dramatic impact on corporate culture and innovation. Personalized learning is no longer just a buzzword in L&D. It is essential to how adults learn, engage today’s workforce and drive business results.

3. Accountability and follow-up

External trainers provide accountability and follow-up to ensure hands-on training drives behavior change. In Research Transforming Learning for the Future of Work from Brandon Hall Group, the third challenge for L&D teams is that “they don’t know how to measure learning well enough to ensure that the future required skill development will be achieved.” To create these on-demand learning experiences in response to the changing workplace landscape, L&D departments may find themselves cramming too much information into a single training session. There needs to be more time for effective follow-up to reinforce learning and ensure it is applied consistently, which can be problematic if there is a lack of staff or expertise within L&D teams. Accountability and follow-up ensures that all training initiatives are not one-off events, but an ongoing learning and development process leading to real behavioral change. Training strategies should be built around opportunities with time to practice newly learned skills and less time to introduce new concepts. External trainers are equipped to build accountability mechanisms needed to reinforce learning content, making it part of leaders’ day-to-day work, and to track their ongoing progress as they are not multi-directional or multi-prioritized. drawn . By providing sustained accountability and follow-up, external trainers can once again help organizations save money by ensuring that training is practical and sustained, leading to desired outcomes and outcomes. According to research by Deloitte“Organizations with a strong learning culture are better equipped to handle change, stay competitive and drive innovation.”

Related: 12 ways you can start immediately to motivate your employees

Cost of delay

The Ken Blanchard Companies surveyed more than 700 leadership, learning and talent development professionals to find out how they cope with changes in the work environment and what they do from an HR and L&D perspective. They found that 79% of respondents believe it will be more difficult to retain their best people in 2023 due to limited budgets and a lack of resources to develop good content. By using external trainers, you prevent missed opportunities and lost income.

A delay in implementing key training initiatives can increase manager and employee frustration and reduce retention and productivity, which can have a significant impact on the bottom line. You also run the risk of employees continually reinforcing bad habits or incorrect techniques that take more time, effort, and money to undo. Not to mention what organizations can lose in potential revenue or market share due to a lack of skilled essential workers. According to Korn Ferry, the cost of delay, if left unchecked, could be approx $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual turnover.

Learning cultures are essential for the modern organization. In fact, since 2022 72% of organizations have made learning and development a strategic and critical function. Investing in L&D empowers employees, improves retention, changes culture, enables innovation and has a significant impact on bottom line. By leveraging the expertise of external trainers, their ability to customize programming, provide accountability and follow-up, and drive real behavior change, L&D is able to meet the current and future needs of employees in real-time skills development by making an investment that not only saves them time and money, but ensures a viable workforce for the future.

Conclusion

What areas of expertise are you missing internally in your learning and development teams, and how can external trainers help fill these gaps? What potential costs and missed opportunities has your organization already experienced from delaying training and development initiatives? How can you better prioritize your training and development budget to ensure you invest in the support needed to deliver on mandated initiatives? Are you prepared for the enormous upskilling and retraining needs within your organization? These are just a few of the questions that may indicate that it’s time to invest in external trainers.