Mushroom trainers.

If you could create a computerized, three-dimensional model of a medium-large mortgage banking company (say, 3,500 people) and highlight the individuals doing formal training, you would get a very peculiar picture.

Somewhere--hopefully under the head of the company's primary business (sales or servicing)--you will find the nominal training department, probably with a head count of 15 to 20 people.

But that's not the end of the story. Over in Human Resources (HR), you will find one or two trainers delivering orientation, benefits training and training in certain functions near and dear to the HR heart, like interviewing skills and disciplinary procedures.

In the Information Technology (IT) department, there are a couple more trainers delivering live and Web-based training on the telephone system, the BlackBerry [R] and several of your job-related computer systems.

Another trainer is housed in the Compliance area. The Servicing division has a loss-mitigation trainer.

Two of the Sales divisions share a sales trainer, and the third has an all-purpose trainer who is a local help desk, equipment installer, system trainer and vacation relief.

All these far-flung trainers report to their functional manager--not to the Training department.

Now that we have a picture of what formal training looks like in this organization, let's ask some pertinent questions. I will suggest answers that may indicate a useful course of action for your own company.

Why is this structure peculiar?

Because training is a corporate support service, exactly like legal, accounting or purchasing. All the other support services are consolidated in headquarters; only training is spread all over the organization. For example, if your western regional sales manager decided to hire his own attorney, the general counsel back at headquarters would have an actual, physical cow.

How did this peculiar situation come about?

Sometimes it's because the training department is incompetent. It delivers ineffective training, and the manager of the client population decides to take care of it himself or herself.

Much more often, the training department is comprised of competent, dedicated people but it is simply understaffed. A ballpark number for an optimal training staff is 1 percent of the company's head count. Our hypothetical company has 3,500 employees, with a training staff of 15 to 20-half of what is needed. In this case, the training staff cannot hope to provide the needed training. And yet training must occur if people are to do their jobs. In this situation, sales, operations and IT managers hire their own trainers because there is simply no other way to get the job done.

Trainers pop up here and there all over the organization like mushrooms on a warm, wet night.

Is this a good thing?

No, it's a very bad thing. It's bad for the managers hiring these mushroom trainers, it's bad for the people they train and it's bad for the trainers themselves.

Why is it bad for the managers?

First, because they shouldn't have to worry about training. Training should be done for them, exactly like legal, accounting and so forth.

Second, because, frankly, they have little expertise in how to recruit, select, manage, develop or compensate a trainer.

And third, they deserve a more professional training product than these 'shroom trainers can possibly provide.

Why is it bad for the people they train?

Because the people chosen for these positions are always the subject-matter experts. This does not qualify them to train any more than being a good driver qualifies a person to be a mechanic. To be fair, these people are almost always excellent technicians, good-hearted, dedicated and far from stupid. The training they put together is far better than nothing, but not close to the quality a professional trainer would produce and not close to what the trainees deserve.

Why is it bad for the trainers?

What does a corporate trainer need to succeed and grow in his or her career?

The trainer needs:

* skilled coaching in the techniques of needs analysis and task analysis;

* skilled coaching in delivery techniques; and

* skilled coaching in identifying and implementing the most appropriate training intervention for a particular situation.

It is highly unlikely that the functional managers have this expertise.

And, since the trainer is barely on the periphery of the functional manager's vision, guess who will be first out the door when the inevitable head-count reductions come?

Andrew S. Hubbard is a well-known speaker and writer on training topics within the financial services industry. He has published three books on training, and he can be reached at [e-mail].