Results - Training

Organization and goals of training

With regards to the main goals of training there is a major difference between companies in Singapore and in the Netherlands. The two most mentioned goals are the same for both countries: improvement of employee performance and improvement of company performance. (These two goals are of course correlated.) However, retention is number three among the most important goals of training in Singapore, whereas it was not mentioned at all in the Netherlands (see Figures 5 and 6 below). Key to retention are elements such as offering people career opportunities within the company (as highlighted by Europhia's 2007 International Salary Survey results separately (see the survey results as published online) as well as having a clear training strategy. Many employees do not just look for a better salary, but for long-term career opportunities within a company and for training programs to develop themselves. (See Table 1 below.)

Table 1: Europhia's 2007 International Salary Survey results. Aspects that attract employees to companies in Europe, Asia, and North America respectively.

Based on the 2007 Recruitment Survey, respondents provided the following main reasons as to why training is offered by companies:

Figure 5: Main goals of training in Singapore

Figure 6: Main goals of training in the Netherlands

However, the survey indicates that about half of all companies in Singapore do not have a formalized training policy, which consists of training objectives and organization of training in the company. Many companies conduct a Training Needs Analysis to assess the gap between the employees' skill-levels and the company's requirements. Current skills-levels are assessed by performance appraisal. In order to fill the identified gaps a training plan is designed. Those companies with very formalized career paths often have Career Development Plans that indicate the training needed for a person in a certain position to either improve their current performance and/or to move to a higher level. In most companies attending training is encouraged by the management, but not compulsory.

In the Netherlands, almost half of the companies state that their training policy is based on the employees' wishes, which means that every employee gets the opportunity to take part in training, but it is up to every individual whether they want to take this opportunity. This basically means that no clear strategy or development processes exist. The other half of the companies bases their training policies on the development of key competencies or on important business goals.

There seems to be a general requirement for additional training courses to be offered, as the majority of the respondents in Singapore name trainings that should be offered, but are not offered at the moment. Those the most mentioned were financial training, high-level management training, and fundamental logistics or supply chain training. In the Netherlands 58% of the interviewees think that there is currently no special need for further training.

84% of the respondents in the Netherlands do not measure performance improvement of staff after training, as they have difficulties in developing a measurement system that assesses performance improvement. Some of these companies do think however that evaluation of training is of great importance. All companies measure staff satisfaction after training, although the method differs from company to company. In Singapore, 70% of the participating companies do not measure the employees' performance improvement resulting from training. However, 90% measure the employees' satisfaction after training, mainly by handing out feedback forms to be filled out by the training participants.

Thus, many companies do not have a clearly defined mechanism to measure whether training is actually effective in achieving the objective to help the company/employee in their work. Training is cost-intensive and therefore the report recommends this as another aspect to be carefully considered by companies.

Outsourcing of Training

In the Netherlands 90% of the participating companies provide training internally and 79% outsource at least part of their training needs. This means, most companies offer their employees both internal and external training. In general, training of hard skills is outsourced, whereas soft skills training are provided by a training center within the organization.

In Singapore, 91% of the companies provide both internal and external training. However, complete outsourcing of all training is very rare; only 6% of the companies do so. According to a significant number of respondents, 80% of all training programs should be outsourced, as in-house development of training programs is seen as a waste of money. However, many respondents think that corporate-specific learning should be provided internally.

14-09-2008 om 00:00 geschreven door www.bpma.be