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Training Consultants 

Training and development plays a pivotal role in building and maintaining a skilled and productive workforce. As your business begins to scale and your team grows, training and development will become even more important. Below are some examples of when you might need to hire a training consultant:

• Onboarding new employees
• Training customer service staff 
• Educating staff on new software, equipment or processes
• Training staff on regulatory compliance and workplace health and safety

Our goal at SavvySME is to introduce you to the different services offered by training consultants and other important information to help you hire the right person for your business.

What is a training consultant?

Training consultants are experts in providing tailored training and development solutions for both compulsory training and professional development. They help you fill performance gaps in your business and improve your employees’ skills, productivity, efficiency and teamwork. Unlike large companies that hire in-house training and development teams, small businesses usually outsource training consultants due to limited resources and budgets.

What does a training consultant do?

Training consultants offer a wide range of professional and workplace training and development programs including:

• Training needs assessment 
• Performance gap analysis
• Instructional design
• Compliance training 
• Occupational health and safety training 
• Sales training
• Employee onboarding
• Custom eLearning solutions 
• Leadership development training
• Development of learning management plans and systems
• Team training
• Soft skills development 
• Products, services and software training
• Technical skills training 

What are the benefits of hiring a training consultant?

The key benefits of outsourcing a training consultant are:

• Training existing employees is cheaper than hiring new employees
• Retain top talent
• Increase employee satisfaction
• Subject matter expertise 
• Lower overhead costs
• Objectivity 

Outsourcing a training consultant to upskill and train existing staff is considerably cheaper than hiring new employees. It’s also an excellent way to retain and attract talent as it shows you are committed to their professional development and growth. Your employees will feel valued, more invested in their work and have a greater sense of job satisfaction. 

Outsourcing training consultants means you can hire people with subject matter expertise on the courses they deliver. Working with businesses in different industries, training consultants will have a deeper knowledge of market trends, industry challenges and best practices. 

This gives you greater flexibility and also means you only have to pay for training programs your employees actually need—much cheaper than hiring in-house training and development personnel. 

Lastly, it gives you access to an alternative and unbiased perspective which can be advantageous in identifying knowledge and skills gaps and the best ways to fill them.

How much does it cost to hire a training consultant?

It’s difficult to provide an accurate figure as training needs vary greatly from business to business. It also depends on the type of training, whether they are any specialisations required and the number of employees attending the training. Some training consultants charge on an hourly basis, while others charge on a per-employee basis. They may also offer a fixed package price. To give you a rough idea, the hourly rate for a training consultant starts from around $150 but this could exceed $250 per hour in some cases.

Before you start thinking about how much to allocate to your training and development budget, evaluate any skill deficits that may be affecting your employee productivity levels and performance. Some of the key things to factor into your training budget include:

• Training instructor costs 
• Facility costs
• Training materials 
• Employee time
• Ongoing training costs 
• Travel and living expenses 

How do I hire a training consultant?

Not all training consultants have the same skills, experience and training style. You need to hire someone that can deliver quality service and fulfil your training needs. To help you, here are a few important things to consider when hiring:

• Industry and professional experience: It’s important to find someone that is both an industry expert in the field of training you need and also has experience delivering professional training. Avoid trainers that have little experience in the industry or with little instructional experience.
• Credentials: Credentials may look fancy but some have more worth than others. It’s a good idea to ask what each credential actually means. 
• Training and working style: It’s important for a training consultant’s traits and values to align with those of your business. What is their working style, communication style and approach to problems and challenges? Make sure you get a grasp of their training and working style in your initial conversations—it’s usually best to trust your gut feeling on this one.
• References: Ask to see some samples of training materials and reviews and testimonials from previous clients. Is the general consensus of reviews positive? Are there themes of how people describe them as a trainer? Do your homework to make sure they can back up their claims. 

Always make sure a trainer provides a contract that outlines the type of training to be delivered, where and how the training will be delivered and how much the program will cost in total.

If you think you’re ready to hire a training consultant or you’re interested in finding out how much a particular program would cost, we can connect you with training consultants here on SavvySME. Simply answer a few questions to get started.