Should Staff Training-Time (e.g. for the introduction of a new ERP) be considered Project Costs or Operational Costs?
Anonymous
There is a debate going on, whether the internal efforts/costs of internal staff attending a ERP Training should be considered Project Costs/Budget of the ERP Implementation-Project or being treated as operational/running costs/time spent. Looking for common practice examples or methodology excerpts treating this topic. Saving Changes...
Unless that training exclusively supports the project, or the project is implementing the ERP system, that can not be charged to the project. Training on general use office software is administrative overhead. Saving Changes...
If the training is required to achieve the project's outcomes then it should be factored into its budget. However, if the training is raising staff skills generally and is not specifically tied to the scope of the project then it would come from training (operational) budgets.
This is how things "should" work.
However, as usual, there are "in the field" exceptions to both cases. Where a project's budget was extremely constrained, I've seen the functional departments have to cover staff training even when that was directly tied to the project's scope. And in other cases, I've seen a project which was under budget have some of the surplus spent on general skills training for staff.
If it's a capital project, training is considered an expense, according to PWC. If it's not a capital project and you don't have any other constraints around funding, make a decision and be consistent. Initial training as part of project launch could be considered a project expense if it's necessary to fully utilize the software, but future training, post-rollout, would be more of a program cost. Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
If the staff and training is project specific, then those should be costs to the project and budgeted accordingly. However, if the training is enterprise wise, then this should be discussed with management to agree whether the cost allocation will be per project or not.
This all should be dealt with during the estimation and planning phase. Saving Changes...
Community Champion
