Research commissioned by global IT and business skills provider Global Knowledge claims, "UK businesses are failing employees on training". And who’s to say they’re wrong?
Let’s look at what it claims to have found in its survey that it believes shows businesses are failing to meet the career aspirations and training needs of their employees. Over half (57%) of employees claimed they weren’t being given the budget for learning and development opportunities. A further 49% of those surveyed say they can’t get the time off work to train.
It claims that despite a very high 72% of employees viewing learning and development opportunities as "just as important as salary when choosing their next job," they say that aspiration isn’t being met.
Just as bad potentially, from the supplier’s point of view is that too many businesses risk wasting the investment they may be putting into training by failing to effectively monitor the return on investment of what’s offered.
Thus one in five (21%) say their bosses hadn’t bothered to check that learning had been effective and only 26% had follow-up discussions with staff to assess the value of the training they’d done.
No wonder the majority (53%) says it’s on-the-job or nowt – relying on observation of their peers to check new skills.
There’s also some grim news for fans of the SFIA, or the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) initiative, driven by a government-industry collaboration, which is supposed to be matching skills desired to relevant course/resource.
It may have a ways to go; on this survey’s basis, while 56.9% of organisations wanted to know about the SFIA, only 9% were in the process of implementing it and just 13% said it was already widely used internally.
What’s the source? The responses of 700 people split into IT employees – and those responsible for learning and development.
"Employees value training yet it’s sad to see that many employers are failing in their responsibility to match employees’ passion to learn and develop," says Allan Pettman, UK managing director of the company behind the poll.
"[But] in tough economic times, it’s more important than ever that employers help their staff to grow and innovate. Failure to invest in training places a burden on employees, many of whom are relying on their skills to remain employable and maintain career progression. These results would suggest that employers are badly letting them down," Pettman added.
Now as a training company, there’s no surprise with Pettman signing off from all this with the warning that "employers really should be doing more to invest in training, otherwise they’ll face challenges of staff retention, motivation and encouraging innovation". He would say that, wouldn’t he, right?
Nonetheless – it can’t be good that IT training has become the Cinderella of our industry.
One that may well come back to haunt us at the Ball.
