How do I ask my employer to fund my training?

To get your employer to fund your training, make the case in terms of what your executive gets back rather than what you get out of it. Pick the right moment in the budget year, put a one-page proposal in writing with the cost, the dates and the result your leader should notice within a month, and offer to report back on it. Most employers say yes to that, because it is not a request for a perk. It is a proposal to make their most senior person more effective.

I have spent over a decade recruiting Executive Assistants through our sister company, Lily Shippen, and I have watched the same pattern for years. Organisations will spend freely on leadership development for the executive and almost nothing on the person who runs their office, not because they have decided against it but because nobody has asked them properly. Most people who attend our training days are employer-funded. In this article I will share how they made the case and secured the funding.

Start with what the executive gets

The mistake most EAs make is to frame training as personal development. It is true, and it is the weakest possible argument, because it asks your manager to spend money on you. Reframe it. When you operate more strategically, your executive gets better protection of their time, better preparation for every meeting and more space for the work only they can do. That compounds every working day. A training day that gives a chief executive back two hours a week has paid for itself within the quarter. That is the argument to open with, before you mention anything about your own development.

Pick the moment

Budgets are set, not found. In most UK organisations the following year’s budgets are planned between October and December and released in January, so a request in November is written into next year’s plan while a request in March competes with money already spoken for. The other good moment is straight after your performance review, when your development has just been discussed and the door is open. If you have missed both, ask when the next cycle opens and get a date in the diary for the conversation.

Put it on one page

A verbal request is easy to defer. A one-page proposal is a decision waiting to be made. Keep it to five things: what the training is and who delivers it, what it costs including VAT, when it is and how you will cover your desk, what will be different for your executive within a month, and how you will report back. The last two matter most. Name a specific outcome, such as “a weekly one-page brief before the executive meeting” or “the inbox triaged before you arrive”, and commit to a date when you will show the result. Managers fund things they can measure.

Choose training that makes the case for you

Some programmes are easier to fund than others, because they are built to produce a visible result quickly. Our Future Ready EA & PA Training Day ends with a structured 30-day plan built around your role, with one result your executive should notice within the month and a follow-up call to review it, which gives you the report-back built in. The EA & PA Strategy Training Day is CPD accredited, which matters to L&D teams, and is the deeper investment in how you operate as a strategic partner. Both come with a one-page employer overview written for your manager, so the proposal is half written before you start.

Handle the no

“There is no budget” usually means “not in the budget I control”. Ask which budget. Central L&D funds, the team’s own training line and the executive’s discretionary spend are three different pots, and your manager may only have been thinking of one. Ask when the next cycle opens and request that your training is written into it. Offer a phased option. Ask what evidence would change the answer, then go and build it: a month of the weekly brief, done unpaid and unasked, is a hard thing to say no to twice.

After the yes

Do what you said. Put the follow-up date in your manager’s diary before the training, not after. Send the one-page result when it is due, in the language of the business: time given back, decisions made faster, a problem caught early. You are not only closing this request. You are making the next one easy, for you and for every EA who comes after you.

If you manage EAs

Everything above applies in reverse. If you lead a team of EAs or run an executive office, the business case is the same and the numbers are larger. Our corporate training covers team training days, development coaching and retainer programmes, and the skills we train for are the ones your executives are already asking for without the vocabulary.

Where to start

Download our free employer funding guide, which covers when to ask and what to say in more detail, and check the upcoming dates so your proposal has a date on it. If you would like help shaping the case for your own organisation, book a free 30-minute Discovery Call with Emily. The full range of programmes is under EA and PA training.

Frequently asked questions