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 A new survey on behalf of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) highlights that training is often overlooked at work because it is time consuming and expensive. With this being a leap year, almost a third of 1000 UK employees questioned by the LSC suggest they would like to use the extra working day (29 February) for training purposes.
Other LSC survey results
- Almost half admit that training is often overlooked at work and the results show a lack of communication between bosses and their workforce; while 42% think their employer is unlikely to give them training, over half the supervisors questioned said they would
- 42% think their employer is unlikely to give them training
- 61% of respondents explain that time is the biggest constraint
- 49% say they are put off by the expense of it
Furthermore, research by employee engagement and retention specialist TalentDrain, involving 9,500 employees from a variety of industry sectors and occupations, claims that ‘personal growth’ - defined as challenging work and opportunities for training & development - is one of the most important factors in maintaining employee commitment.
Kevin Lovell, learning strategy director, KnowledgePool
When times are tough, the training budget has traditionally been first in line for cutbacks, with some organisations even placing a moratorium on training spend.
However, this time I think we may see a different response. The war for talent is much tougher this time round and heads of L&D are now behaving as if people really are their most important asset. They are investing in their skills through training and other initiatives. There’s a growing realisation that unless they do this they will lose competitive advantage and perhaps even the ability to sustain business-as-usual operations.
This extends to graduates as well. We’re not seeing any let-up in graduate training programmes. Indeed in some cases there are plans to increase graduate activity. Of course, the acid test will be to see the actual recruitment levels this coming summer. However the imperative is for firms to maintain viable talent pools that will support their business aspirations.
There’s a longer-term goal here: companies need to recruit graduates now in order to have the right skills in two or more years’ time. Particularly in the financial sector, (refer to the Financial Times: financial services groups to cut recruitment of graduates) the big players seem to be competing over an ever-diminishing pool of top talent. I believe that a shortage of suitably qualified graduates is more likely to limit the graduate training programmes than any cutbacks in funding.
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