Ask HN: What's the best process for ensuring techies get training?

What’s the best way for your company to get techies the training they need? What process works best? Who’s in charge? I’m writing a white paper that has a working title of “Investing in employees: Best ways to train and educate your staff.” I am collecting advice from happy workers, with the goal of collecting suggestions that might help the boss do a better job of providing training. I realize that the first bullet point is: Provide some. We’re going to take that as a given, however, since the person who reads this white paper already knows that treating employees well generates productivity and better employee retention. But it’s one thing to say, “We want to ensure that people improve their skill sets” and another to do that in the best way possible. So I am looking for specific, actionable advice with WHAT IS SUCCESSFUL. (Note that if you’ve had only lousy experiences… I’m sorry, but that isn’t helpful here. I have plenty of horror stories. They won’t be included.) Tell me about a (current or past) company that ensured you learned the skills needed for today (your current programming language), tomorrow (the dev environment you’ll need for the next project), and the future (management training, a course in presentation skills). What is/was the process for training staff? Whatever type of training a company provides – classes, certification training, conference attendance – SOMEONE decides who has access to it, how much money is budgeted, what type of training is provided, and who chooses the subject. That is, is a developer allotted a fixed education budget that she can use as she sees fit? Does a manager decide which skills his staff need to hone, either for remedial purposes or enhancement? Does the HR department work with the IT department to fashion a training plan? Who tracks the training recipients, and notices which employees have been left to learn skills on their own? Who judges the successes of training program, by what metrics?