When I talk to HR Directors in Hong Kong about training vendor sourcing, I hear the same things over and over. Not because HR teams in Hong Kong lack skill or resources — but because the system they’re working with is genuinely broken for the problem they’re trying to solve.
Over 22 years building training businesses and speaking with hundreds of HR leaders across Asia, I’ve collected a fairly consistent picture of what’s frustrating, what’s working, and where the gaps are. This is that picture.
“I spend more time finding vendors than briefing them.”
This is the most common frustration I hear. The actual task — getting clear on what your team needs, writing a good brief, choosing the right provider — is relatively manageable. The problem is everything that sits around it.
Opening Google and not knowing where to start. Visiting eight websites that all look similar. Emailing people who don’t reply quickly, or who reply with an immediate sales call rather than a thoughtful response to what you actually asked. Managing multiple email chains simultaneously. Waiting two weeks for proposals you then have to compare in a spreadsheet.
The sourcing overhead frequently outweighs the time spent on the decision itself. And because most HR Directors are managing multiple priorities at once, training sourcing often gets squeezed — meaning decisions get made under time pressure, which rarely produces the best outcome.
“The proposals all look the same.”
When HR teams send the same brief to five or six vendors, they get back five or six versions of the same proposal structure. Background on the firm. Methodology section. Sample agenda. Client logos. Price at the bottom.
The problem isn’t that vendors are lazy. It’s that the brief they received didn’t give them enough to work with. And without a relationship or conversation to build on, vendors default to showcasing what they know rather than proposing what you actually need.
The result is a comparison exercise that is more about design quality and brand familiarity than about what would actually work for your team. The vendors with the best-looking decks win too often. The ones who are excellent in the room but run on word-of-mouth referrals get filtered out early.
“I don’t know who else is out there.”
This is the insight that led us to build Growth Academy Asia.
The training providers that HR Directors in Hong Kong know about are the ones who market well — who invest in SEO, attend events, run webinars, send emails. That’s not a bad filter, but it’s a narrow one.
Some of the best facilitators and training providers in Hong Kong don’t do much of any of that. They’re running on referrals. They’re too busy doing the work to build a significant marketing presence. They’re brilliant in a room but invisible on Google.
The HR Directors who find those providers are typically the ones with the most extensive peer networks — who know people who know people. For everyone else, the discovery process is limited to whoever shows up on the first page of search results.
“Once I find someone good, I never want to let them go.”
The flip side of a difficult sourcing process is that when HR teams find a vendor who genuinely delivers, they hold on tightly. Many training decisions in Hong Kong are repeat business — not because the HR Director hasn’t looked around, but because the cost of a poor sourcing process makes loyalty rational.
The consequence is that some excellent vendors are overutilised by a small set of clients, while comparable or better providers for specific needs go undiscovered. And the programmes run year after year for the same teams start to feel stale — because familiarity, not fit, became the primary selection criterion.
“I’m not confident I made the right choice until after it’s run.”
The typical training vendor selection process doesn’t give you much to go on. Proposals describe what will happen in the room, but they can’t tell you how a facilitator handles a difficult participant, what they do when the energy drops at 2pm, or whether their style fits the culture of your particular team.
The decision is almost always made on incomplete information. And the only time you find out whether it was the right choice is after the programme — which is expensive feedback if it wasn’t the re right choice.
What’s Actually Changing
The HR Directors I speak to now are increasingly looking for a different approach. Not necessarily a more sophisticated procurement process — a simpler, faster, more reliable one.
What that looks like in practice: a single brief that goes to a platform rather than five separate email threads. A first-pass match done by someone who knows the vendor landscape and has already interviewed the providers on it. Proposals that come back tailored to your context rather than templated. The ability to get from “I need a leadership programme” to “I’m speaking with the right vendor” in 24 hours rather than two weeks.
That’s what we’ve built at Growth Academy Asia — and it exists because vendor sourcing problems are solvable. The training market in Hong Kong doesn’t need to be this hard to navigate. The right vendor is out there. The question is how quickly you can find them.
Brief us on what you need and we’ll match you within 24 hours.
Stuart Harris is co-founder of Growth Academy Asia. He has spent 22 years working with HR teams and training providers across Hong Kong and Asia.
