Do You “Own” Your Training?

– WORK FOR HIRE –

I always ask in my Vendor/Project Management Best Practices workshop – does anyone know what these three words mean?

Almost nobody ever does.

Not knowing what “work for hire” means can lead to very costly mistakes when outsourcing training development to vendors.

In this quick video, I explain why every trainer needs to know about those 3 words:

Work For Hire addresses the critical issue of who “owns” the content/solutions/platform being used for your training initiative. This is not something salespeople coming into training from the field can be expected to know about – at least, not without proper on-boarding regarding vendor and project management.

Some clients have paid for training content to be developed, but because the ownership of the actual materials (the IP, or Intellectual Property) was not properly spelled out in the contract, they have had to pay over and over again for the expanded use of the content.

In such a case, three words were missing in the Statement of Work: Work For Hire.

Other clients have ruined relationships with valued vendors by treating licensed training content as if it was now owned by the client, and therefore usable/reproducible at will.

That’s called…well, stealing.

I’ve spoken with vendors over the years who have had their workshops ripped off by clients (deliberately or inadvertently) because these issues of Intellectual Property were not properly understood and enforced. It has costly ramifications, both legal and relational (and reputational).

These matters of intellectual property, licensing, ownership, and usage are some of the many business-critical issues we cover in the Vendor/Project Management Best Practices workshop. I have delivered this workshop “live” for a number of major pharmaceutical companies over the years.

This proven program will be available this spring for my life sciences clients in on-demand (eLearning, annual subscription) format, so that your training managers can gain these skills at any time.

Contact Steve Woodruff at Impactiviti (AskSteve@impactiviti.com) for details.

SEE ALSO: Stop Losing Those Training Dollars!