Training and Learning

“WHY IS WORKPLACE LEARNING IMPORTANT?

Canada’s workforce will be smaller in the future due to retirement of many in the “baby boom” generation and a smaller youth cohort entering the labour market.

In fact, more than one-half the workforce of 2015 is already in the labour force.

We are already experiencing skills and labour shortages in many parts of the country and sectors of the economy, and these will continue to intensify.

In addition, the demands of the knowledge economy and the transformational nature of information technology mean that skill requirements will continue to rise and will change constantly.

All this points to the imperative, more than ever before, of investing in the skills, knowledge and talents of today’s workforce.

HOW IS CANADA DOING?

At present, Canada appears to be under-performing in workplace learning in comparison with other countries.

For example, international studies show that Canada has recently slipped from 12th to 20th place in terms of the priority employers place on training their workers.

Less than 30 percent of adult workers in Canada participate in job-related education and training, compared to almost 35 percent in the UK and 45 percent in the US, for example.

As a percentage of their overall payroll, US firms spend about 50 percent more on training than Canadian firms.

While overall participation in adult training is increasing in Canada, this masks a number of issues of concern:

Employer-sponsored training in Canada has been stagnant. Participation rates in employer-sponsored training and firms’ spending per employee have remained virtually the same in recent years.
Worker training is highly concentrated in Canada, among younger workers, those with higher education and skill levels, and workers in larger firms.
Measures of “essential skills” show that workers in Canada have lower levels than what is needed, according to international standards, to participate in the knowledge economy.
Adult literacy levels in Canada have remained virtually unchanged over the last decade, with 40 percent of adult Canadians lacking the literacy and numeracy skills they need.
Yet, basic skills training remains at the bottom of training priorities (only 2.2 percent of total training expenditures).
Almost one-third of Canadian workers report unmet job related training needs.

WHY DON”T WE DO MORE?

A number of factors influence firms’ decisions whether to invest in workplace learning.

Time and money – the costs of training and the costs of lost working time – are significant barriers.

Firms lack information about where to get training and how to organize and provide it, and what training is effective.

Employers are not convinced about the return-on-investment of training as compared to physical capital and equipment or other investments.

Many firms worry about “poaching” or so-called “free rider” problem – losing workers and their training investment.

These barriers to training are greater for small and medium-sized firms, although they tend to do more informal training.”

Source; Highlights from the report Employer Investment in Workplace Leaning in Canada by Mark Goldenberg – A discussion paper prepared by Canadian Policy Research Networks on behalf of the Canadian Council on Learning.

GW Group specializes in assisting organizations overcome barriers to training. We help you develop and implement your capability of becoming a learning organization. We help ensure training in Workplaces is linked to organizational goals and organization strategies.

“In today’s knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn.”
-President Clinton

WHAT ABOUT SME’s?

“Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of most nations. Worldwide, SMEs represent over 95 per cent of all enterprises, account for 80 per cent of global economic activity, and are found in all sectors of the economy. In Canada, close to 97 per cent of our estimated 2.4 million registered businesses are SMEs (having fewer than 500 employees) employing over 55 per cent of the labour force.

SMEs, like larger organizations, need to constantly and consistently upgrade their management skills, their capacity to gather information, their technology base, and their commitment to investing in the skills and knowledge of their employees.5

The benefits of investing in workplace learning and training impact both the overall performance of an organization, and the performance and opportunities of individuals. For those SMEs that think investing in learning is too expensive, or not critical to their business success, they should carefully consider the alternatives: mediocrity, apathy, lost sales, lost customers, lost productivity, decreased performance, poor quality, and poor working environments.

Human Capital and SMEs: Talent for Success

Human Capital is defined as the knowledge, skills and experience of an organization’s people. It is a key driver of individual, organizational, community, and national performance. Human capital is an organization’s DNA. Improving human capital is essential, therefore, to strategies for increasing productivity, innovation and high performance-competitiveness within SMEs.
The challenge, however, is that many SMEs in Canada feel overwhelmed by the thought of having to provide workplace training activities to their employees. In particular, there is a misconception of costs and time commitment toward training and workplace learning within many SMEs that must be overcome. And when it comes to providing training and learning activities, many SMEs wrongly compare themselves to bigger companies – whose training and learning resources are much bigger. For example, in 2005- 2006:

Ernst & Young spent approximately US$1 million on its learning curriculum.
The Olive Garden had 8,466 full-time trainers: a ratio of 1:8 full-time trainers to worldwide employees.
Lockheed Martin spent approximately US$48 million on tuition reimbursement.
10.4 per cent of Pfizer’s payroll went to training.
IBM had 1,328 full-time trainers, and an annual training budget of US$775 million.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel had no maximum on its tuition reimbursement program.
The average ‘Top 100 Learning company in the United States had a training budget of US$50 million, and did 52 hours of training per employee.

SMEs cannot match this level of investment. To do so would be the wrong strategy or approach to take as they typically fall short of the training and learning investments that larger companies are able to commit.

Rather than focusing on the quantity of their learning investments (e.g., money and resources) SMEs need to pay more attention to the value of their learning and training activities (e.g., the quality of the learning output). By focusing on desired learning outcomes and expected training impacts, SMEs have the ability and opportunity to achieve great success.” Source: The Conference Board of Canada, Effective Workplace Learning Practices in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises – Prepared for: The Canadian Council on Learning March 2009.

Workplace learning is most effective when it is aligned to corporate objectives and corporate strategies. It should drive business results while equipping employees with the skills they need to excel in their current and future roles.

Done right, workplace learning should impact on the amount of work that takes place (productivity) and the quality of the work being done (leading to improved performance, customer satisfaction, quality and profits).

Source: The Conference Board of Canada, Effective Workplace Learning Practices in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises – Prepared for: The Canadian Council on Learning March 2009.

There is an old adage you might have heard about training!

“What if I train my people and they leave?” “What if you don’t train your people and they stay?”