As most corporate learning leaders build their budgets for the coming year, they are fighting for things like instructional design resources, eLearning design tools and virtual facilitator support. While all of these are important to a training team, there is one category of resources that is too often neglected: the partners that simplify your training logistics.

Logistics: Are They the Admin’s Problem?

For most corporate learning teams, the logistics behind any given training course are left to administrators to figure out. From booking conference rooms to shipping webcams to remote learners to getting workbooks printed, the nuts and bolts of how to administer training is often an afterthought, after designing the training itself.

Training admins are experts in their own arena, which includes paying attention to all the details necessary to make a learning event happen. However, when the team considers logistics a lesser priority than good design, those admins are often left bearing the burden of making the training happen instead of being empowered to find solutions that create more bandwidth for the entire team.

Bad Logistics Obstruct Good Training

With 225 locations across 25 states and an additional 600+ employees in the corporate headquarters, training has always been a strategic priority for the organization because of the constant need for hiring retail employees and creating a pipeline to management. The corporate learning and development team is responsible for designing both new hire training and management training across the company. For the training team’s manager, this always included providing content that was up-to-date and followed instructional design best practices to optimize learning transfer.

However, with his default printer, updating content before training sessions was often more of an ideal than a reality. In order to change files, the training administrator had to reach out to the vendor directly, send detailed instructions, refer back to old proofs, and even trade emails about page numbers. This whole process took about two to three weeks on average.

As a result of relying on a cumbersome process, content often did not get updated in time for the training sessions. That meant that, while facilitators could follow instructional design best practices, too often they were training new hires on out-of-date brand information.

Good Logistics Empower Better Training

Toward the end of 2020, the training team decided they needed to prioritize their logistics in addition to their content. First, they switched to an online system that allows them to update files from their own desktop, rather than relying on the vendor. Then, they set up a custom print storefront so each retail location could order content for their training locations.

This meant that content was now updated in minutes, rather than weeks, and the corporate team no longer needed to chase down print orders on behalf of the 225 national locations. Now the training team can dedicate those hours toward improving learning paths in a more meaningful way, from gamification to new hands-on training exercises.

Logistics: A Strategic Priority

“Logistics” is not as flashy a topic as “learner personas” or “learning journeys.” Yet, the logistics of where, when, how and with what training sessions will occur are essential to making any course happen. When you empower your team with the right tools to execute on logistics, you’ll find the whole team has more time to focus on improving your offered learning, instead of wasting three weeks updating one piece of content.