March 2008

Productivity
Outsourcing to increase your productivity

Is outsourcing a consideration for your learning development department? If it isn’t now, it may become one in the near future due to the impact of retiring baby boomers and the loss of their resources. Consequently, this could directly influence your ability to combat these talent shortages and increase your dependence upon third-party vendors.

"A qualified outsourcing vendor will increase your productivity by performing the tasks and assignments that burden you and your staff in a more efficient and cost-effective manner."

The primary activities companies outsource include the delivery of training (44%) and the development of instructional content (30%). While the primary reasons for outsourcing are to deliver more training than internal resources can provide (29%), to gain access to better techniques and training expertise (23%), and to increase the speed of training programs to market (14%).

Senior management buys results for their training investment and the demand for these results placed upon heads of learning is significant. However, they and their staff are literally buried under mountains of tasks, assignments and initiatives. They are generally not interested in new programs and services because they can barely handle what’s on their desks right now.

Yet this is where out-tasking makes sense. In many cases, time-sensitive, time-intensive and non-critical aspects of jobs can be outsourced for all levels of the learning and development function. Essentially placing the focus on becoming more productive and completing the mission-critical tasks and assignments that you and your staff need to complete. This approach offers distinct advantages, including:

• Helping you deal with the work you need to complete in a timely manner.
• Allowing you to focus on high priority and more strategic projects.
• Reducing the time required to complete tasks and assignments.
• Lowering your fixed costs.
• Providing access to additional experience, knowledge and expertise that may not be readily available to you.

Some examples of out-tasking that might make sense to a head of learning and increase productivity include assisting you:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of your learning and development activities with a fresh objective set of eyes to identify redundancies and spot gaps.
• Organize training programs to maintain focus and direction.
• Develop innovative and effective performance-based instructional designs.
• Produce instructional content and materials such as manuals, presentations and workbooks.
• With the physical design and layout of instructional materials including authoring, proofing, editing, graphic design and other pre-print activities.

Effective out-tasking requires using a third-party vendor who has expertise in these areas and is capable of working seamlessly with you and your staff. They must be willing to work under your guidance and supervision to create a product that embraces your organization’s unique culture and appears as if it was designed by your department. Additionally, they must be able to perform under your timelines and meet deadlines. The final element of out-tasking is cost. A third-party vendor is an extension of your department and needs to be willing to work within your budget constraints.

The bottom line is that a qualified third-party out-tasking vendor should be able to increase your productivity by performing the tasks and assignments that burden you and your staff in a more efficient basis and do it in a cost-effective manner.

Timothy F. Bednarz, Ph.D.