Should my organization pursue Train the Trainer?

Does it make better business sense to have an ITI Trainer come to us when we need training or should we pursue an investment in Train the Trainer?

At first blush, you might think that making the investment in getting one of your company's employees trained to become a trainer is a no-brainer. While it may seem like this is the most economical way to go, we've found over the years that that's not always the case.

Here we provide a list of considerations and questions to pose to internal stakeholders at your organization, aimed at helping you determine whether a train-the-trainer program is the right fit for you.

First it's important to consider, whether your company does in fact employ professional trainers. Is there a training department or safety group within your organization that delivers a variety of content to your team members?

The goal with this question is to understand whether your organization in fact already employs professional trainers, who are simply in need of more in-depth knowledge pertaining to a particular subject.
It's important to bear in mind that it takes a special skillset to be a professional at teaching/training adult learners. Instructors must fully understand the best methods for engaging a student audience and maintaining course quality.

Does the individual that your company has earmarked to become a trainer, indeed know more than the students they will be teaching – have they been formally trained to this effect?

It is important to accurately gauge whether the instructor prospect(s) has the ability to answer questions that expand beyond the defined content and are thus able to descriptively answer the “why” questions that they're guaranteed to get.

Does the individual have a general understanding of the (important that this is not opinion based, but rather proven via past methods of execution), regulations and standards that govern and inform our industry best practices?

It is vital to ensure that the trainer prospect(s) know which resources are important to pull from when their own personal knowledge does not encompass certain categories.

How many people does your company typically onboard at any given time?

The goal here is to understand if this is a training that ITI can conduct for you, via a client site program. Ultimately what needs to be considered is your company's projected return on investment.

How many people do you have in one training group?

This is really a continuation of the question above. If you organization is looking to train one or two people at a time, it might be more cost effective to send you employees to an ITI Training Center to receive the training they need.

How frequently do you need this training to be conducted?

It's important to consider whether scheduling constraints are what's driving the desire for training to be conducted in house.

How many students do you plan to train annually?

This question is important to not only inform curriculum purchases expected throughout the year, but to gauge if your company's intended volume will surpass the ability for ITI to serve you with trainers at the rate and volume you need.

In Summary -

ITI’s success is a product of our Instructors status as Crane & Rigging SME’s prior to working at ITI, coupled with our induction process, philosophy, indoctrination, and training to ensure premium delivery of our “world class” curriculum. Additionally, ITI Instructors work week in and week out delivering our programs across the country and as such are highly skilled at recognizing when the students are not getting the information and adapting to ensure that they do get it.

We believe your most efficient and cost-effective path is to have ITI instructors teach your crane and rigging programs.

For personalized advisement to your organization, please contact ITI at info@iti.com and we'd be happy to help you.