The time to train is now

Well, all the signs are that the economy is starting to pick up and growth return. And in turn, that means businesses now really do need to invest if they are to not only catch the wave of economic up-tick, but also continue to stay riding it. And one of the key investments that is now needed is in staff training and development.

However, according to staff assessment and development consultancy, a&dc, the current sharp drop in training is putting organisations at risk of stagnating, losing top talent and falling behind the competition.

The sharp drop has been identified by think-tank IPPR, in a survey conducted for the US bank JPMorgan. This found that UK businesses suffered a drop in training four times greater than any other European country during the recession, leading to a skills deficiency that threatens to hold back recovery at a time when businesses will need to be on their mettle of they are to compete in global or regional marketplaces.

In addition, an analysis by The UK Commission for Employment and Skills also found that one third of employers in the UK provided no training whatsoever for their staff. The annual spend on training by UK companies was estimated to have fallen by £2.4bn since 2011.

However, more organisations will need to utilise training during this time of recovery if they are to get the most from their available talent and remain competitive, according to Pip Clarke, Business Development Director at a&dc.

“This research is concerning to say the least,” she said. “Training and development is a key part of an employee’s work cycle and directly impacts staff retention, motivation and a company’s competitive advantage, so it’s surprising to see such poor levels of uptake. As businesses increasingly look to bolster their headcount in order to grow, valuable time and money is being wasted if they’re not effectively assessing and developing the talent they already have.

“Companies need to recognise that, in many instances, the best way to utilise talent and increase output or efficiency is to target the right development for staff. It costs far more to recruit new professionals than it does to develop your existing workforce and this is something a lot of businesses should start to consider. The lack of training at many organisations is also potentially damaging in terms of staff engagement. Increasingly career development is the reason that staff decide to move on, and so without the proper opportunity to develop, talent will begin to look elsewhere and we could soon begin to see these businesses struggling to hang on to their top professionals.”

Clarke’s call should be ringing bells amongst both cloud services vendors and users. Cloud delivered services and applications are now entering the mainstream, and one of the most important areas for staff development that stems from this is staff that can see how services can exploited, even mashed together to create services of specific value to their business, and what services are and how to evaluate contenders. Perhaps most important of all, however, is training and development in how to look beyond the capabilities of the technology and `technology’ and move towards skills in assessing what services a business needs and what values they can bring.