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As a People Ops Leader, do you ever find it difficult to get your leadership team onboard with your training proposal and take the next few crucial steps?
Your goal is to close the gap between recognition and action: convincing your stakeholders that there is a problem to be solved through learning interventions and inspiring them to set the proposal into motion.
That’s why we created this guide to help you pitch your training proposal that will speak to your leaders effectively and, more importantly, get them to take action.
What Makes a Management Training Proposal that Inspires Action?
1. A Clear and Concise Description of the Problem You’re Solving
A clear and concise description of the problem you’re solving is important because it helps your stakeholders quickly grasp what the gaps are and how the proposed management training can close those gaps.
An example of a skill gap would be engaging in difficult conversations, such as poor performance or misaligned expectations. With training, managers would be better equipped to handle these conversations, leading to a more positive employee experience and stronger performance.
2. A Well-Defined Target Audience for the Training
A well-defined target audience is important because it ensures that the training is tailored specifically to the needs of the people who will be participating.
This increases the likelihood that the training will be effective and provide the desired results.
An example would be: "The training will be targeted towards first-time people managers who have been managing for fewer than six months."
3. Clear Learning Objectives Aligned with Business Goals
Having clear objectives allows People Ops leaders to measure the success of the training and further convince stakeholders that future training interventions help to achieve business goals.
If one of your goals is to the strengthen the management skills on your team and ensure that every employee has a great manager, some examples of clear learning objectives could be:
- Managers will be able to confidently deliver just-in-time, constructive feedback to their team members in a way that is both kind and direct and supports positive behavior change.
- Through effective listening, managers will be able to recognize when a team member is feeling unmotivated and can coach them through potential next-steps.
- Managers will be able to role-model a learning mindset and increase psychological safety within their teams by acknowledging their own mistakes and near-misses.
4. An Overview of Training Methods and Timelines
This allows stakeholders to have a clear visual of how the training will be delivered and what the estimated completed time is. This helps with the decision-making process as stakeholders can see if the training can be completed in phases or all at once.
Examples of training methods are e-learning, micro-courses, classroom training, self-study, or blended approaches.
5. A Budget that Outlines the Cost of the Training
Cost is the biggest factor when it comes to approving or rejecting a proposal. Some stakeholders might not be able to see the strategic value of training if the cost is too high.
This is why it's crucial to weigh the cost of each management training program. If there are programs that cost less than hiring a full-time L&D team member, it's more likely to get approved. However, you'll still need to ensure that the program can help you achieve learning and business outcomes.
Develop your managers with science-backed, actionable, pre-created micro content that creates true behavioral change.
9 Key Questions That Will Help You Get Buy-In
To help you write a training proposal that resonates, we've put together a list of 9 key questions to answer. These questions will help you get inside the head of your stakeholder and speak their language. Doing this can increase the likelihood of getting your proposal approved. Plus, going through these questions one-by-one also helps you get clarity.
Question 1: What are Your Company’s Goals for Next Year?
This question helps you align your training objectives with the company's overall business goals. By doing this, you can show your stakeholders that the training is not only beneficial for employees, but also for the company as a whole.
For example, one of your company's goals for next year is “increase revenue by 25%”.
Follow up question: What needs to happen to support this goal?
One approach could be enabling your managers to have career conversations and set development goals with their direct reports.
Setting development goals will give employees a feeling of forward momentum in their careers, in turn helping them feel more engaged. Higher levels of engagement in groups will motivate people to go the extra mile to reach revenue targets and deadlines
Question 2: What are Some of the Biggest Challenges Facing Your People Managers?
Your people managers are the key to success. Without them, training initiatives will fall flat.
So it's important to understand their challenges and needs so you can develop training that helps them hit their goals.
Some critical questions to consider:
- What are the biggest challenges your managers face?
- Are the challenges tied to a lack of skill? Motivation? An obstacle? Something else?
- How does this impact the business?
- What would be different if the challenges were addressed?
By exploring the questions above, you’ll have a much clearer picture of creating a management training program tailored to closing the gaps.
Question 3: What Challenges are People Ops Facing?
Let's not forget your own team. If your team is able to focus on the highest impact work, that's a big win already.
To streamline and optimize your processes, think through the parts of training that consumes the most time and energy.
- Is it possible to outsource that process to people who know what they're doing?
- Is it possible to reduce the number of tasks and do only what matters?
- If you plan to add more management training programs, will your team and managers be able to cope?
- What will the cost structure look like?
- How will this impact the business?
Question 4: How Will It be Different if People Ops' Challenges are Addressed?
Your stakeholders need to understand clearly what could happen if your team functions at their optimum. When HR teams function strategically and proactively, it’s directly linked to higher employee engagement and retention.
Question 5: Why are You Recommending a Management Training Program?
From a stakeholder perspective, the primary reason for investing in a management training program is to retain top performers and achieve business goals.
Let's take the previous goal example: increase revenue by 25%. To make it happen, you need each employee to have a personal growth plan, receive actionable feedback, and have at least one 1-1 with their managers every other week.
So, where does training come in?
Training arms your managers with the right tools and skills to design effective personal growth plans, give constructive feedback that creates change, manage poor performance effectively and have 1-1s that inspire and motivate.
Now, it's much easier for you to pitch the strategic value of the program because your stakeholders can see the benefits are directly contributing to the business goals.
Question 6: What Does Success Look Like?
Results are top-of-mind when making decisions. A way to describe success is to answer the question “What will be different as a result of a management training program?” and “How are people going to behave differently?”
Question 7: How Do You Know You’ve Succeeded?
Knowing where the goal-post is can help you focus your efforts and measure if you’ve hit the goal.
- How will we track?
- What metrics will we use?
- What are our leading and lagging indicators?
Here's a simple tip that data-driven People Ops leaders use: study the data sources. Look for exit interviews, HR escalations, engagement surveys, NPS scores, and any other data that you’ve collected. Analyze the data collectively and recognize the patterns. Eventually, you’ll gain data-driven insights that clearly show the results of your programs.
Question 8: What Do You Recommend and Why?
All of the information above helps your stakeholders better understand the strategic value of your recommendations.
One of the reasons why we leave recommendations to the end is because your stakeholders need to buy the impact first before they're ready to listen to your recommendations.
If they're nodding all the way through your proposal, it's likely they will nod at your recommendations too.
This is why you need to understand inside out what you're recommending and why:
- The training approach
- The curriculum
- The delivery method
- How this training will be different from other training programs out there
- Why they should choose your training program over others
Question 9: What Will This Cost and How Will This Investment Impact the Business?
Lastly, it’s about defining the costs and their return on investment.
When drafting a training proposal, you will want to outline what data you will be able to show that relates to how behaviors have changed.
- What has improved and by how much?
- What is the link between those improvements and financial performance?
- How much will it cost to build an in-house training versus buying something off-the-shelf and what are the trade-offs between the two?
- What is the delta between the investment and the financial pay-off?
When you're able to answer all of the questions above, it's likely that your training proposal will get the green light.
You don't need to have everything figured out from the start. But what's important is that you speak the same language as your stakeholders. Focus on the outcomes like they do, then segway into your recommendations. It'll be much smoother.
I wish you all the best in your proposal writing! Good luck!
Download Free Management Training Proposal Guide
Ever have a brilliant idea and a well-made management training proposal but got rejected by your stakeholders?
One of the things your stakeholders look for is the “strategic value of the idea”, i.e. how useful your ideas are to the business goals.
If your stakeholders are able to visualize the strategic value of your ideas, you’re much more likely to get a green light.
That’s why we’ve created this guide to help you pitch to your stakeholders and get them onboard with strategic value in mind.
It’s an editable PDF guide with the 9 questions above so you can download and use it whenever you need.
