Why and How to Outsource Your L&D Initiatives

The corporate world is gradually adjusting to running operations in the new normal, post Covid. This shift is causing many organizations to evaluate their learning & development (L&D) programs. Over time, we have seen the emergence of new technologies and practices, rising competition, and fluid market conditions. As a result, we need to upskill and reskill employees to keep pace with emerging developments in the market.

Owing to rising complexities, companies are forming strategic partnerships with L&D specialists to outsource their employee development initiatives. Outsourcing may have developed a bad reputation in the past. However, the pandemic and the rise of a gig economy have made outsourcing a conventional practice for organizations looking to hire third party experts to manage non-core business functions.

In this post, I’ll share five reasons to outsource employee training to experts and how to do it the right way to reap all the benefits.

5 Reasons to Outsource Learning & Development Initiatives

1. Diverse, Growing Training Needs

Modern organizations comprise several departments functioning independently with their dedicated expertise; for example, sales, marketing, R&D, and IT. And each of them has their unique training needs.

For instance, your marketing team may need to utilize new SEO tools and automation software. Similarly, your sales team may need to learn about new products, services, and processes. Managers could benefit from leadership development programs to pick up key skills such as emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, and asynchronous communication, to perform better.

However, you might not have qualified in-house resources to upskill and reskill every employee and department. Considering this, you may have to opt for outsourcing.

2. Adapting New Learning Technologies and Methods

Learning and development teams have come a long way in the last two decades, from simple PowerPoint presentations to complex, interactive courses featuring videos, animations, infographics, games, and other exciting features.

Consequently, companies are looking to move away from traditional instructor-led classroom sessions and outdated technologies. They want to adapt the latest rapid eLearning authoring tools, learning management systems, virtual instructor-led training (VILT) software, microlearning, and other trending technologies and methods.

The only problem is that most traditional in-house L&D teams might not have the expertise to fuel this transformation and offer the solutions you need.

3. Budget Limitations

We have always regarded outsourcing as a cost-effective way to procure services. Today, many organizations don’t have L&D departments. So, if you were to hire an in-house team to upskill and reskill your employees, then you would have to bear recruitment, onboarding, and infrastructure costs to get them up to speed and equip them with everything they need to develop your training program.

By outsourcing L&D to a specialist, you don’t have to worry about procuring software such as authoring tools, hardware including workstations, and more office space. Outsourcing eLearning courses is an on-demand service. So, you don’t have to bear any recurring expenses once your L&D project is complete.

4. Large Scale Rollouts

In many circumstances, organizations have the knowledge and training strategy to upskill and reskill their employees, but they encounter additional challenges. These barriers include a lack of time or absence of skilled personnel to support large-scale products or services rollouts. Have you ever thought about how to solve this problem? You’ll find an effective solution in Rapid eLearning. Rapid eLearning is the most effective technique to boost your organizations’ training scale and speeḍ It aids in the creation of courses through time-saving and high-end eLearning design and development. It delivers eLearning courses within weeks without compromising its quality.

Companies with hundreds or thousands of employees located around the world might require outsourcing eLearning. This ensures they have competent L&D resources to help their teams upgrade and switch to new platforms and technologies.

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5. Time Barriers

It’s not a lack of finances but a lack of time causing the bottleneck in eLearning design and development. With the rapid pace of technological advancements and socio-economic changes, modern organizations need to keep pace with emerging changes to remain competitive and profitable. Thus, learning and development not only needs to be frequent but also swift.

This is where outsourcing comes in to help organizations in quickly producing high-quality training courses in multiple formats. Experienced L&D partner organizations have a diverse team of subject matter experts, instructional designers, authoring tools experts, and trainers to upskill and reskill your employees and help you meet your organization’s growing goals.

How to Outsource Your L&D Initiatives

Getting the most of your L&D outsourcing initiatives depends on the expert you’ve zeroed in on. The hiring process is based on your company’s goals and your team’s capabilities. And with so many options available in the market, finding the right outsourcing partner can be a hassle.

You must carefully examine several portfolios and ask dozens of questions about your potential partner’s capabilities, preferred tools, technologies, and experience in eLearning design and development. To simplify the decision-making process, I have compiled a simple guide to help you find the best professionals for your next learning and development project:

1. Ask About Their Expertise

The first thing you need to do when researching potential training providers is to learn about their expertise. Many L&D partner organizations specialize in a particular area. For instance, one such provider may have the expertise and resources to develop eLearning courses and provide sales and marketing instructors, but they might not supply IT or leadership training.

So, before you outsource your employee training to anyone, ensure that they understand your industry, business model, strategy, technologies, team capabilities, and skills gaps.

2. Ask What They Do Best

You need to learn about their toolset and the technologies that they use, and find out where they excel. For instance, one L&D outsourcing provider might specialize in developing resources for classroom instruction and virtual instructor-led training sessions. In contrast, others could be well-versed in rapid eLearning using authoring tools, such as Adobe Captivate, Articulate 360 Storyline, and iSpring Suite.

A few L&D teams may even specialize in creating courses with:

• Videos
• Podcasts
• Infographics
• Interactive PDFs for just-in-time learning

So, you must carefully assess your training strategy and based on that choose an L&D partner. Many eLearning providers offer multi-channel, hybrid training solutions and can recommend the right approach for your business.

3. Ask About Their Progress Measurement Strategy

There’s no point in creating a corporate training program if you can’t measure its effectiveness and outcomes. Therefore, an important aspect of choosing an L&D partner involves learning about their progress measurement strategy.

For instance, you need to find out the type of metrics they measure when creating eLearning courses or hosting live training sessions. Popular examples include:

• Course Completion Rate
• Training Experience Satisfaction Level
• Learner Engagement
• Activity Pass Rate
• Job Role Competency Rate,
• Course Completion Time

Similarly, you need to discover how they evaluate performance and learning outcomes. Do they stick to quizzes with multiple-choice and true and false questions? Or do they offer more advanced assessment methods, such as gamification and scenario simulation?

An experienced training provider must openly share their progress measurement strategies for you to measure your training ROI.

Bottom Line

So, there you have it. The why and how of outsourcing L&D initiatives. With this information, you have everything you need to find the best training provider and you can confidently upskill or reskill your employees to meet your organizational goals and objectives.

Hiring for learning & development professionals has soared exponentially since the pandemic, with thousands of organizations revamping their corporate training strategies and employing the latest eLearning technologies and methods in the market.

Outsourcing your eLearning design and development is a sensible but complicated process. You can succeed at exploring different L&D outsourcing services if you have the right guidance. This eBook outlines how you can identify the right partner for eLearning outsourcing and help you discover whether it’s a workable solution that meets your training needs. Grab your copy now!

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in May 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.