When will you know if your organization is ready to offer training programs to its external stakeholders? How will you accomplish such a feat so that it’s successful? And what types of benefits can your organization expect to see as a result? Keep reading to learn more.
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Why Offer Training Programs to External Stakeholders?
There are many benefits to consider when offering training programs to external stakeholders. Here are just a few of them:
- Your organization will be able to create a stronger and more prominent brand in relation to its competitors.
- You can sell training programs or content to drive revenue by charging fees.
- Training programs offered to vendors can reduce organizational risks by ensuring everyone is on the same page and qualified to complete specialized or important levels of work.
- You will be able to turn your organization’s customers into brand ambassadors by letting them access specialized content and courses.
When to Offer Training Programs to External Stakeholders
Ideally, your organization should already have a well-established L&D team that creates and manages high-quality learning content before you consider offering training programs to external stakeholders.
You’ll want to verify that their existing programs are resonating with their intended learners and yielding high results and impact for your organization. And then you’ll need to consider hiring additional L&D staff to assist your L&D with external training efforts. Or, you can consider hiring an outside third party to help you develop your external training programs, although the effectiveness of the content and its integrity will be different.
How to Offer Training Programs to External Stakeholders
Once you’ve decided to move forward with offering training programs to your external stakeholders, here are some things you’ll want to do, step by step.
- Audit your current tools and resources. Sift through and analyze the current learning content you already have in your learning management system and the other tools you use. And reevaluate other resources you rely on to see what you can use to develop training content for external stakeholders. If you don’t have to start entirely from scratch, you’ll save more time and money.
- Define learning audience and goals. Make sure you fully understand what external stakeholders you’re designing your training content for, and focus the content and its delivery around their needs and how you can help them reach their goals. You should determine whether you should have webinars, self-guided study, mobile learning options, reading materials, etc. And simultaneously, consider your organization’s goals, too (i.e., heightened brand awareness, increase in revenue, etc.).
- Ensure learners can track their own progress. To keep learners engaged in your training programs, make sure they can track their own progress via things like badges earned, credits toward a certificate, and so on.
- Offer a free trial. Whenever you launch a new training program, give your external stakeholders a chance to test it out first to see how they like it before they’re required to pay for anything. This will build trust and increase engagement rates.
- Promote offerings. Once you’ve worked hard to develop your training programs for external stakeholders, don’t forget to market them and promote them. And make sure your employees know when and how to offer them, too.
Keep the information above in mind if you’re interested in developing training programs for your external stakeholders.