Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Building a Training Budget Around Business Priorities

A training budget should show how an organisation intends to improve performance, manage risk and build capability—not simply how much it plans to spend on courses. When learning investments are tied to operational targets, leaders can see which programmes deserve funding, which need redesign and which should stop.

For Australian employers, this means accounting for dispersed teams, tight labour markets and different operating conditions across Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and regional locations. A practical budget can support office-based employees, FIFO crews, frontline staff and hybrid teams without treating every learning need as the same.

Budget approach	Main strength	Common weakness	Best use
Course-based	Easy to understand and administer	Funds attendance rather than capability	Compliance and established skills
Role-based	Connects learning to job performance	Requires sound workforce data	Capability frameworks and career pathways
Outcome-based	Links spend to business measures	Needs evaluation discipline	Strategic transformation
Portfolio-based	Balances risk, growth and innovation	More complex to govern	Enterprise learning strategy

Start With Business Outcomes

Begin with the business priorities that learning is expected to support. These may include reducing safety incidents, lifting sales conversion, shortening time to proficiency, improving customer retention or preparing managers for growth. Each priority should have a clear performance measure and an explanation of how employee capability influences it.

A request for leadership development, for example, becomes stronger when it addresses high turnover among new supervisors or inconsistent performance across sites. A digital learning platform becomes easier to assess when it is connected to faster onboarding, better knowledge access or reduced travel costs.

This approach also prevents attractive but disconnected ideas from consuming the budget. A conference, workshop or learning burst may be worthwhile, yet it should compete on its expected business contribution rather than its popularity.

Separate Mandatory And Strategic Spend

Compliance training deserves a protected allocation, particularly in industries governed by workplace safety, privacy, financial services or professional standards. However, mandatory learning should not absorb funds intended for capability growth. Separate cost centres make the difference visible and improve reporting to finance and senior leadership.

Strategic spend can then support initiatives such as enterprise leadership, customer experience, technical reskilling and change adoption. In Australia, employers may also need to account for award conditions, shift patterns, site access and the cost of releasing employees from productive work. A two-hour session can carry very different labour costs for a Melbourne office and a regional Queensland operation.

Use a portfolio view when comparing proposals. A blended programme might combine facilitator-led sessions, digital resources, manager coaching and workplace practice. This can be more effective than assigning the full budget to classroom delivery, especially for geographically spread workforces.

Cost The Full Learning Journey

The visible supplier invoice is only one part of the investment. Include design, content production, learning technology, facilitation, travel, venue hire, employee time, manager involvement, administration and evaluation. For FIFO operations or teams travelling between Perth and remote sites, logistics can materially change the cost per participant.

Custom development should be assessed against speed, reuse and business relevance. A well-designed asset can serve multiple cohorts and locations, while a generic course may require additional explanation, adaptation and follow-up. Organisations planning rapid rollout can examine a rapid development model to consider how design choices affect time and value.

A useful budget model separates fixed costs from variable costs. Fixed costs include discovery, design and platform configuration; variable costs include participant numbers, delivery days and travel. This makes it easier to forecast different scenarios when headcount, locations or implementation timing change.

Make The Budget Testable

Treat evaluation as a budget line from the beginning, rather than an activity added after delivery. Predictive Evaluation can help forecast likely adoption, impact and return on investment before a programme is fully implemented. It encourages leaders to identify the conditions that must be present for learning to transfer into everyday work.

A strong business case states the baseline, the desired change and the evidence source. Measures may include quality scores, sales results, incident rates, productivity, retention or manager observations. Not every outcome will be caused by training alone, so the evaluation design should also record other changes affecting performance.

Budget proposals are easier to compare when they pass consistent tests:

Which business priority does this investment support?
What employee behaviour or capability must change?
What will implementation cost beyond the supplier fee?
Which operational measure should move if the programme works?
When will leaders review adoption and performance evidence?

Evaluation evidence should be collected at several points, rather than only through an end-of-course satisfaction survey:

Before delivery, record the baseline and business problem.
During rollout, monitor participation, access and learner confidence.
After delivery, check whether employees apply the required behaviours.
At business review points, compare performance with the original target.
After the first cycle, decide whether to scale, revise or retire the initiative.

Govern And Refresh The Portfolio

Assign ownership across finance, business leaders, people and culture, and the learning function. Finance can test assumptions and affordability; operational leaders can validate relevance; learning specialists can assess design quality and delivery risk. This shared governance reduces the chance that the budget becomes a list of disconnected departmental requests.

Set decision rules for new funding. High-priority work should have an accountable sponsor, a defined audience, an implementation plan and an evidence approach. Lower-priority initiatives may still proceed, but they should use simpler formats such as learning bursts, manager toolkits or curated resources rather than costly custom programmes.

Review the portfolio quarterly or at major business milestones. Market conditions, workforce shortages and technology changes can quickly alter capability priorities in Australia. Tracking industry recognition and external perspectives, including relevant industry coverage, can also help leaders challenge assumptions about effective learning practice.

The essential principle is simple: a training budget should make business priorities visible in financial decisions. When every major investment has a defined capability need, full cost view, adoption plan and measurable business outcome, learning becomes a managed performance asset rather than an annual expense.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.