European
businesses are failing to provide their staff with adequate skills development,
new research warns.
While
more than 90 per cent of businesses state that improving skills is very
important or critical to maintaining a competitive edge, a third have yet to
establish a skills development programme, according to a survey from analyst
firm Forrester Consulting.
The
IBM-commissioned survey was based on responses from more than 250 board-level
executives from companies in France,
Germany,
Italy,
the Nordics, Spain
and the UK.
It
shows that on average, companies are investing only 0.05 per cent of their
revenue in skills development.
Mary
Sue Rogers, global practice leader for human capital management for IBM, said:
“It is shockingly clear that while the development of employees’ skills for
future competitive advantage is high on the agenda among board-level
executives, there is a significant shortfall in what organisations are actually
doing about it.”
Skills
survey: headline findings
–
More than four in 10 (44 per cent) of survey respondents fail to offer any kind
of cross-functional skills development
–
More than 30 per cent have not implemented e-learning solutions within their
organisations, and 45 per cent of larger companies have no e-learning strategy
in place
–
More than 90 per cent cite IT literacy as very important or critical to the
business, yet a quarter of those surveyed felt their organisation’s grasp of IT
was not adequate
–
Three-quarters believe that training poses a risk to the organisation in terms
of the potential of employees moving to other companies
–
Only one in five of the companies surveyed rate academic skills as more
important than vocational skills.
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