People Centricity case study

Price Your Training Ambition Before You Choose It

1,730staff comments read and coded into 2,125 ideas
0.5%of payroll spent on training, half of it out of central sight
8benchmarks: hospitals and large employers’ apprenticeship schemes
3ambition levels to 2040, each priced in hours, people and money

The situation

The question behind the question.

Training at this institution was large and scattered: continuing education, apprentices, interns, specialised nursing programmes and long courses, each run its own way. Its six-year people strategy asked for an innovative skills-development policy, and a national shortage of nurses and doctors made the question urgent. There was no institutional training policy, no shared ambition and no single view of what training cost. The executive committee would need a choice, not a catalogue.

As it was asked

“Define our training ambition and write our training policy.”

As we reframed it

Show what training is today and what it costs, write the floor every ambition needs, then price the levels above it so leaders can choose with the numbers in front of them.

How we worked

How the work unfolded.

01

Count what exists

We started with the facts nobody had in one place. 5 kinds of training were mapped: continuing education for more than 10,000 participants a year, some 200 apprentices in 25 programmes, 1,800 interns, specialised nursing programmes and long courses. Training took about 0.5% of payroll, and half of it was spent locally, out of sight of the training centre. The learning platform was hard to use, and there was no institutional strategy for training.

02

Hear the institution

Then the voices. 1,730 free-text comments from the institution’s own staff survey were read with AI support and coded into 2,125 ideas on a 10-dimension model of a learning organisation: two thirds asked for better training solutions, a quarter for infrastructure and technology. Workshops with the training centre’s own teams and interviews across a map of 31 stakeholders, from finance and legal to unions and young staff, added the view from inside.

03

Write the floor

Then the first training policy the institution had ever had: principles, the roles of 9 actors and the legal bases, with a regulation and procedures to follow. Its first measures, short and medium term, came from the training centre’s own workshops. Beside it, a baseline: what had to be done anyway to meet current needs and close audit points, whatever the ambition. Its development measures were tied to the succession process designed in parallel, so training served the posts that mattered most.

04

Price the ambition

Then the choice above the floor. Standing still was priced too, and judged not acceptable. 4 hospitals in Switzerland and Europe and 4 large employers’ apprenticeship schemes showed what each level looks like. 3 ambitions to 2040, cantonal, national and international, were priced in training hours per person, from 25–30 to 60–80 a year, in investment over 15 years, training staff and payback, from roughly neutral to 6–8 years, with a risk matrix, a decision grid and yearly indicators. The decision was split in 2: the policy first, the ambition next.

The instrument

A floor, then a level

The floor. What must be done anyway: current needs, audit points, a policy and its rules.

The levels. 3 ambitions, each with its hours per person, its people, its cost and its payback.

The order. Agree the floor now; choose the level once the floor holds.

Ambition debated without a price is a wish list. Priced, it becomes a choice an executive committee can make.

What moved

What changed, and what didn't.

1stinstitutional training policy, now in force with its regulation and procedures
Evidence Decision taken Adopted in practice Measured impact
What moved

The institution now has its 1st training policy, in force, with a regulation and procedures written and applied behind it. Training is governed as one system rather than 5, and the ambition levels went to the executive committee as a priced decision, with indicators from satisfaction and completion to turnover and time to hire.

What didn't move

No ambition level had been chosen when we handed over. The indicators tracked satisfaction, completion, turnover and time to hire, not whether training changed practice or care. Few peer hospitals shared detailed data, and the baseline figures on hours and spend differed between sources.

What we'd say to a peer

Write the floor before you debate the ceiling. A first policy and a baseline make training governable; priced ambition levels turn the next step into a choice, not a wish. And find out where the money already goes: half of it may be spent where nobody sees it.

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Method note:

Own approach in 4 steps; current-state map of 5 training types; AI-assisted coding of 1,730 staff comments on Bersin’s 10-dimension high-impact learning organisation model; 31-stakeholder map; 8 benchmarks; training policy; 3 priced ambition levels to 2040.

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