It is time, not money that is holding back the skills levels of the British workforce, according to a new study.
As chancellor Gordon Brown stepped up calls for a highly skilled UK workforce to compete in a globalised world, the report by government-funded training provider Learndirect showed that almost three-quarters (70 per cent) of the 200 HR directors questioned found staff couldn’t make time for training.
A third of respondents also said that staff who signed up for training regularly failed to complete the course due to time pressure.
John Weston, chairman of Learndirect, told Personnel Today that business needed to become more innovative in developing and tailoring training solutions for employees and should adopt e-learning to provide flexibility and efficiency.
“When you put all of this into an industrial context the true cost of industrial training isn’t what you pay for the course it’s the diversion time for taking people off the job,” he said.
The report, Embedding E-learning in Large Organisations, warned that organisations needed to have an e-learning strategy that is aligned to corporate objectives to give them the greatest chance of embedding e-learning.
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The report’s author, Howard Hills, said e-learning needed to be bought into by the board and the chief executive.
