How important is company training?

[Cornish Steve]

How important do you believe company training is in this day and age? Should employees expect to receive company training? If so, how often? How much money per employee do companies set aside annually for training? Who generally leads company training?

Our experience is that companies like to keep training in-house. Is this your experience too? What if a company has employees scattered around the world?

I'd appreciate your thoughts on these matters. Thanks.

[mumper]

In-house training is fine as long as the trainers themselves keep up to date with changing methods and strategies.

I have found in the past that there tends to be a certain amount of arrogance and annoyance on their part when it's suggested that from time to time the trainers need training.

[Astaroth]

Certainly within my employers company there is a heavy focus on training. Most training for our volume roles is done in house where as the majority of training for non-volume roles is done by outside companies (though with several we have had bespoke courses created)

With the exception of IT we do not bill for man hours for things like training/ projects etc and so it is difficult to say how much is set aside per employee. For our average telephone advisor we probably send them on 4 days of training a year and in addition we probably pay for one in ten to take external qualifications.

On my department we budget in the region of £3000 per head for training - our team is very unorthodox withing the company though and this certainly wont be the standard

One of the main purposes of our training is for staff engagement - especially in our volume roles. If our telephone staff want to move up to the next level of complexity or up to team leader level we have a number of courses they can take which gives them a flavour of the potential job, gives them some skills they can use in their current role and enables them to feel they are earning the evidence that they want the next role.

For the more costly external qualifications our system is more laborious to get it authorised and require you stay with the company for a minium of 2 years after completing the course or be subject to having to pay back some or all of the costs.

[Richard Conyard]

I would like to introduce a little more company training since I don't believe we do enough.

However that said I do agree with our general ethos that people should be learning every day in the job and a greater part of training should be done by themselves with the Internet.

[Stephen]

We do quite a bit of management training - interview skills, recruitment, conducting performance appraisals/disciplinaries etc. It's surprising though that many organisations just expect their people to become effective managers overnight without any training or guidance! Even a short one or two day training course can make the world of difference to their confidence and abilities.

[Cornish Steve]

It's surprising though that many organisations just expect their people to become effective managers overnight without any training or guidance!

I agree wholeheartedly. Many companies seem to believe we learn management skills by osmosis or assume that we are born with them.

[emubill]

In my eyes good business management = good training. From what I have read on these forums many of us are perpetually looking to improve our skills and develop our businesses at the same time. The cut and thrust involved in new start ups are cemented into long term prosperity by evolving within your chosen industry and training (either formally or informally) is the key asset.
The Japanese use the Kaizen approach - making small changes which reflect on the big business - and look how their economy prospered post WW2.
I use CPD - continuous professional/personal development.
I work for Youngs Seafood £500m annual turnover but their training is, in my opinion, poor, if not irrelevant. It's paid lip service. They use internal trainers, who basically ensure that the paperwork for new starters is completed.
Have also found that when times are tough training budgets are some of the first to be cut - when I believe they should be increased.


Nige