Building a Training Plan for a High Growth Company

For high growth companies that have to scale rapidly, training is essential to support both leader and employee development.

Furthermore, the right training and development, especially when fostered early on to inspire a culture of learning, plays a critical role in a startup’s ability to thrive throughout the many transitions it will face in its first years of growth.

Of course identifying the need for and benefits of introducing training is easy. The hard part is actually developing and executing on a training plan. Following these three steps can help you get started.

Step 1: Determine Your Training Needs

First and foremost, you have to determine your training needs so that you know what kinds of courses to develop and run.

Some of the most common training needs for high growth companies include:

• Leadership training: Leadership and efficiency are always priorities
• Employee training: Career development, managing through change and working through conflict are common themes that can be addressed through training
• Executive integration: How your executive team works together can make or break the success of the organization

That said, it’s important to take the time to understand the most pressing needs for your organization, especially since one of the most common gaps in training plans is that what the People Organization thinks the business needs is not always what the business actually needs.

The best way to avoid this trap and develop the most impactful training plan possible is to have your People Organization conduct a strategic assessment that ensures alignment with the business. To do so, your team should sit down with both business leaders and employees in order to identify:

• Your organization’s biggest strengths
• Common development areas for your organization
• The top challenges your organization faces

Throughout your conversations with various team members, you should look for the common needs articulated around each of those points. And once you find those common threads, it will become undeniably clear what your organization needs from a training standpoint.

From there, you need to put together a plan and present it to your executive leadership for their buy in and support. With that buy in secured, your People Organization can then quickly work to develop the trainings and launch your program.

Step 2: Iron Out the Logistics

One of the toughest components of training is organizing and managing all the logistics of a comprehensive training plan. After six years of running training programs, I’ve found that if you do not have a LMS system to support you, Excel can be your best friend. I recommend building everything out in a spreadsheet using the following format:

Tab 1

Create the following columns (because you want to be able to filter and sort as you see fit):

• Course name: The course should have a row for EACH time it will be taught. For example, if you’re going to teach the same course four times, you should have the name in four different rows.
• Invitees: Who is eligible for the training? Is it managerial only, individual contributor only or are both welcome to attend?
• Required vs. voluntary: It’s important to articulate if the course is required for the target population, as in the case of a critical cultural or operational rollout, or if it’s voluntary.
• Quarter to deliver: It’s helpful for planning out the year to know how many trainings you’ll deliver each quarter. By adding this column, you can filter and see the consolidated list per quarter.
• Trainer: Whether you’re tapping an internal or external resource, who is leading each training is critical to know and be able to sort through.
• Date/Time: This is especially helpful when you are rolling out the same training multiple times so that you can see how they are dispersed over the course of the year.
• Length: How long is your training in hours? Answering this question will help you determine the best time of day to have the training if it’s not a full day session.
• Maximum attendees: List the maximum number of attendees that can join each training session. This will also help you determine the best location for the course (see location below).
• Live or webinar: Indicate if your training is going to be live or a webinar.
• Location: It is extremely helpful to know in advance where you’re holding each training. For example, can you use an internal conference room or do you need to book a location off site (or is it a webinar training that can be held via video conference)?
• Food/Drinks: Do you need food and beverages for your trainings?

Tabs 2–13

Next, download an Excel template that has each month on a different tab in a calendar format, make that template tabs 2–13 of your spreadsheet and populate the training offerings in each month on the correct day.

This exercise is critically useful as it helps you plan the overall pacing and frequency for the trainings. It also makes it very easy to visualize the proximity of trainings to holidays and see if you have too many trainings scheduled in any one month.

Step 3: Selecting and Inviting Participants

Last but certainly not least, you need to select and invite your training participants. I recommend running three separate tracks for training — one for executives, one for managers and another for individual contributors — depending of course on the needs of your organization.

Following that decision, you need to:

• Generate the invitations for each course. Invitations should have an interesting summary of the goals and outcomes of the course, the date, time and location of the training session and facilitator contact information as a method to register.
• Compile a list of the target participants (i.e. all employees, managers only, executives only, individual contributors only).
• Send invitations to the target participant list about six weeks ahead of the actual training with a two week RSVP window.
• Send a reminder one week before the actual training to both the attendees and their managers so that the managers can encourage them to attend.

Ready to Launch!

If you’ve followed the three steps listed here, then you and your organization are ready to execute on an impactful training plan — all you have to left to do is hit the red button and launch!

Once you have the first few training events completed, I recommend you send out a feedback survey to get a sense of your audiences’ experiences with the different trainings. This feedback should also give you a good sense of how to tweak your tools and logistics to deliver an even better employee experience and improved customer impact

Finally, I recommend that at the end of each annual half, you conduct another assessment to identify any remaining gaps or determine new needs so that you can adjust your plans accordingly.

Good luck!!