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Companies devote time, effort and money into corporate training, which can drive a competitive advantage if done effectively. Rebecca Lewis looks into the latest training trends.
Across the world, companies are finally starting to pump money back into training and learning programmes.Following the global financial crisis, organisations battened down the hatches and sliced off any expenditure not deemed necessary – which often included training and leadership initiatives – but it appears in Europe and the US, despite the maintained economic woes, companies are seeing the benefits in training spend.
According to the 2013 Corporate Learning Factbook, released in January by Bersin by Deloitte, US training organisations grew their spending by 12% in 2012 – the highest growth rate over the past eight years.
Comparatively, a report by Randstad in 2012 found Singapore companies fared poorly when it came to staff development, compared with firms across the region.
Nearly half, or 43% of companies in Singapore, do not sufficiently invest in staff training and education, the Workmonitor Q3 2012 report found.
Given Singapore’s low unemployment rate and highly competitive talent market, this lack of training and education being offered to employees may not bode well for retention rates and motivation of staff, who see training as a means to lead them to other career development opportunities.
So why the high growth overseas, and slower growth in this region? Companies are beginning to realise globally that despite the high levels of unemployment, people with the right skills are still hard to find. Jobs – in Asia and the world – have become more specialised and employees have no choice, but to reinvent themselves to keep the wheels turning.
Additionally, much research has found tertiary and other educational institutes are not developing graduates who are immediately ready for work.
In the US, of the $60 billion (SG$74 billion) spent on training, 50% of that goes towards technology, tools, coaching and other “non-instructor led” solutions.
The e-learning industry is more than US$2 billion and growing – although this sector of training is changing quite drastically – and the Corporate Learning Factbook found that modern best-practice research focuses heavily on the learner experience, with it being very much tailored towards the working environment of the staff member.
While some local research may have you believing Singapore is trailing behind the rest of the world in terms of training spend, there are certainly more than a few companies whose focus is on the future.
It’s worth the costAlstom Group, a global energy solutions and transport company, started the Alstom University about seven years ago after the company made a comeback from the brink of bankruptcy. The university was set up to help the organisation better train its employees within the various functions of the company, as well as instil an overall culture aiming to motivate employees and generate a culture of constant learning and development.
Alstom uses various “edutainment” programmes in its training and focuses heavily on e-learning and virtual classrooms for some employees (read more on page 32).
Jérôme de Grandmaison, vice-president of corporate human resources for East Asia Pacific, says its training efforts, despite the high cost in setting up the university, has helped it train about 10,000 staff each year, and keep them on board.
Because of this, he says, “almost 80% of the population of the group has been renewed. This has been a huge transformation”.
Although de Grandmaison admits the company is holding back slightly on investing in various LMS systems to help it track its training efforts, it has made a solid effort to reduce training costs in countries it operates in by using local vendors and providers, rather than sticking to the Europe-based models.
Similarly, Avnet Electronics Marketing Services (EM) Asia, a distributor of semiconductors, interconnect, passive and electromechanical components, has consistently aimed to provide robust training programmes for employees, even when times have been tough.
In fact, James Tan, vice-president of human resources for Asia Pacific, says even during the GFC in 2009 the company did not cut spending on training and development.
We cut back on expenditure, but the only thing we didn’t cut back on was training. We were careful with our money, but our aim is that with every dollar spent we are seeing the payback.
Everything the company does in regards to training programmes and leadership development is tied into the overall business goals and the ROI.
“Any programme not helping the company to perform better will be out the window in a second,” he says.
According to the Corporate Learning Factbook, when it comes to cost and the question, “are you spending the right amount of money on training?” companies should benchmark themselves against similar organisations in the same industry.
Organisations with more mature L&D functions were found to spend 34% more on training than others, showing that spending more does pay off when it is done well.
“High-impact learning organisations [that is more mature, effective L&D functions] focus on improving performance through training as well as other talent initiatives,” thereport states.
“These L&D functions help to build the necessary human capabilities within their organisations to meet business goals and respond to change.”
It’s a learning curve
However, even when training works well and you are satisfied with ROI, there’s always room for improvement.
Cara Reil, SingTel’s vice-president of talent and leadership development, says the company has had one of its training programmes for its high-potential employees in place for a while, but it is looking at re-defining the programme.
This, she says, is not because the programme – called the Game for Global Growth, which is aimed at future leaders from a pool of senior talent – is not working, but because there is always a way to make it work better (read more on page 34).
When you’re trying to do [training] across the region with people from different types of businesses and different functions with different levels of maturity, it becomes very complex to manage.
While most companies find it easy to cut the training budget or let programmes carry on working at a satisfactory level, over time these decisions can reduce workforce productivity.
Essentially, not putting in the time, money and effort into training makes it more of a hassle for companies in the long run because there’s nothing more expensive than staff who are not properly trained to do their jobs.
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