The concept of internal training in Poplee Training

Before you get started

Poplee Training enables you to manage and promote internal training within your company. This help page applies to:

• Companies that have already set up internal training programs and want to discover how to manage them in Poplee Training;
• Companies that have not yet set up internal training and are looking to implement and manage it in Poplee Training.

What are the advantages of internal training over external training? 

By bringing training design into your company, you can work on customized learning goals that precisely meet the requirements of employees and managers. All content (program, practical application, evaluation) will be adapted to your own specific requirements: corporate culture, business sector, legal context, internal procedures, etc. Although internal training allows you to customize the training content, you also save precious time by not having to adapt it or explain your specific requirements to the organization.

You can increase the frequency of training courses and train more employees if the format (distance, classroom or hybrid) and duration of the training are adapted to the constraints and working methods of your teams. For example, some internal training courses are offered on a monthly basis and last just one hour, to fit in more easily with everyone's busy schedules.

We also note that the content of internal training courses is continuously improved through feedback from the employees who attend them, guaranteeing a high level of satisfaction and ensuring that employees can put what they’ve learned in training into action straight away.

It is also common for internal trainers and employees to continue talking to each other in the months following training, when employees put what they have learned into practice. 

Finally, in-house training can be considered less expensive than external training.The company does not have to pay any additional training costs other than the salary of the in-house trainers and the employees who attend the training. These salaries are paid anyway, even if the training is external.

How can I implement internal training at my company?

Promoting internal training must become a strategic focus for your company. We talk about strategic focus because it is up to you to set the course in order to:

- Enable internal trainers to emerge;

- Authorize trainers to use their working time to run training courses.

This hierarchical validation to become an internal trainer is ultimately an agreement between the HR department, the manager and the trainer.

Having the necessary resources

• Having a pool of business experts 

Some employees may spontaneously volunteer to become internal trainers. But most of the time, HR departments and managers have to actively search to find the right people. There are several options available, starting with a direct employee survey. 

Here are some example questions to add to your review campaign: 

- What is your field of expertise?

- What training courses would you like to run internally? 

- Who among your colleagues could help you develop new skills? Which skills?

Other possibilities: 

- For an event that brings together all employees, ask each participant to prepare a 20-minute mini-training session on the subject of their choice. Each participant will aim to deliver their mini-training to 3 or 4 people. At the end of the day, get all the participants to vote for their favorite training course. The 10 training courses with the most votes will be included in your catalog. Before including them in the catalog, you will simply have to expand the training content with each internal trainer to make it longer. 

• Having the material resources

As logistics are managed internally, it is important to ensure that the internal trainer has access to all the equipment required for the training to run smoothly: meeting rooms, digital media, etc.

Co-development between the HR department and the internal trainer

Since internal trainers are not necessarily educational engineers, HR and internal trainers need to work together in designing the training program: title, duration, program, target audience, support, evaluation, etc.

Training to be a trainer

Our customers are virtually unanimous: to be a good internal trainer, it is not enough to have unique skills or to be an expert in your field.

It is essential that:

• the employee is motivated and willing to invest time in training colleagues;
• the employee must be a good speaker and a good teacher, so that employees want to take the training.

Several organizations offer training to become a trainer, and we are convinced that this type of training can help an internal trainer gain self-confidence and learn the basics of running a successful training session. 

Internal training in Poplee Training

In order to set up internal training in Poplee Training, you need to:

1. Create internal training courses.
2. Enable your in-house trainers to run their own training courses.