Pushing water uphill with a rake?

Further to a thought I had earlier this year, I have been wondering about how to raise issues about workplace learning with clients. I think it is fairly clearly established that employers have cut their spend significantly on L&D over the last 18 months. Yesterday at a networking event I was interested to see significant anecdotal evidence that one of the more common responses from L&D departments is to cut or cease spend with external suppliers but to do very little analysis of internal training teams.

Now first up I am bound to moan about this as I am an outsourced training supplier and training service provider (so please add you pinch of salt now). Equally, I know that turkeys don't tend to vote for Christmas. But I am fascinated that people still fail to consider the total cost of learning. Cutting tens of thousands of pounds from external spend whilst keeping internal trainers delivering less than 75 training days a year is absurd.

I am quite happy to get beaten up on price and quality we should all strive to be making learning happen faster, cheaper and more effectively but it galls when others are not held to the same measure.

I worry that too often in learning and development:

Those who understand and care don't have the authority and those who have the authority don't understand or care...

But this is not reason for despair. I just have to find a better way to articulate the problem...