General Chat

@Dori Bender, I work in the manufacturing industry, so the example may or may not translate into banking.

It all depends on who you count as "Trainers". If it is only the ones who will stand in front of a classroom (or create eCourses) for us it is about 1:250 or so. We have ten production facilities across the country and the numbers shift based on the leadership culture and we are trying to manage that.

We do have what we call "in-line" trainers who are experienced production Associates who support the production lines by coaching new hires and helping troubleshoot production issues. The number of "in-line" trainers varies widely from plant to plant based on availability and leadership focus.

Hope this helps.

We have 360 employees, and it's just me and a technical trainer who supports our CRM. 

Hi Dori -

In my last life I worked in banking.  Each area is so different that our team members each had their area of expertise.  We broke it into teams -Teller, Customer Service (Account representatives), compliance, lending, our service secret shopper program.. As the leader, I worked on sales along with working with each team lead.  I thought we could've used more in lending, but staffing restraints negated that idea.  So for a staff of 400, we had 5 of us. We did cross training within our team.  We also had teammate trainers in each area to help new teammates once they finished training.

Dori -

I can't remember when or where I saw this, but it was Pre-Covid. I remember either Training Mag Network or ATD doing a study on this. But I remember that effective organizations have a 1:250 ratio, of Talent Development Staff:Total Employees, not including adjunct classroom instructors (i.e., SME's teaching a class in their area of expertise). The most effective organizations have a 1:150 ratio.

Hi @Dori Bender! I wanted to share the 2025 State of the Industry: Talent Development Benchmarks and Trends. It's ATD’s annual review of talent development trends, spending, and activities that can help benchmark your team’s work. The PDF version is free to ATD members, and you can find it at this link. 

It's important to determine the goals and future direction of the business first when thinking about how to restructure as  you'll want to set the team up for future success and partnership with the business.  David James has a great podcast episode about this with some smart guests. Here's a brief overview and link to the episode: https://360learning.com/blog/ld-team-structure/  

We have a small team (4 in total) for ~4000 employees.  We are able to do it because we lean on our internal partners (our Police, Environmental Health and Safety, IT, etc.) and we have systemitized and automatized as much as we can.

Judy