Your job in submitting a justification for training is to identify how the benefit to the company or employer will outweigh the cost .  For example, if a class costs $1000, you’re not likely to get an approval if you can identify only $500 in benefits. The benefit must be several times the cost, and the benefit must be achieved within a year. This is classic ROI (Return On Investment). That is exactly what you are asking for – for your employer to INVEST a certain amount of money in something that they cannot put an asset tag on, lock up, or see or touch. They are investing in your intellectual knowledge. Whether they agree to do that depends upon whether they trust you to be around long enough for them to achieve the ROI, and whether they think you have the drive, energy, and mental capacity to implement the knowledge you gain, at their expense.

Some ways to quantify the cost of NOT sending you to training:

1. Consultants. Ouch, yes I am a consultant so this hits close to home but yes, at $95 per hour two days of consulting will more than justify the class expense.

2. Down time. Have you had recent outages that could have been prevented by better network design? Likely.  How many customers will have to get fed up with the performance issues and go to your competitor before you justify this expense?  Well, if you charge $50 per month, losing two customers will more than pay your tuition in a year.

Additionally, I often pay for my employees to get training IF they agree to stay in my employment for some period of time. If they quit during that time period, they agree to reimburse me for the training out of their last pay check.  This agreement can be a simple letter stating the terms, and should be signed and dated by both parties.  Check with your state employment office to ensure you can take that tuition out of their pay check before you do that to be safe.

Finally, the benefit of training to both employee and employer is huge, the challenge is to quantify that benefit and make sure both parties understand the expectations.