Seven in 10 workers claim to have been asked to undertake tasks without being trained to do so, according to a recent poll.
The survey of 6,100 employees in the US, UK and Europe, found 76% of European respondents said they should have received training before beginning particular work or tasks.
Managing people topped the list of jobs that UK respondents said they weren’t trained for, followed by project management, leadership and technical and financial tasks.
Of those employees deemed by respondents to be most in need of training, 76.3% of those polled in the UK said line managers, followed by supervisors (69.9%), senior managers (66.2%), the IT team (61.4%), and the HR team (57.9%). Equivalent figures for Europe were lower with, for example, just 54.3% of respondents there saying that supervisors were most in need of training.
Overall UK respondents were most likely to say particular types of staff were in need of training than those polled in Europe or the US.
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The poll by e-learning specialist SkillSoft was carried out between October 2007 and June 2008 through a web-based questionnaire. About 2,000 respondents from each region were surveyed. They worked in the private sector at companies employing 500 plus staff.
Kevin Young, managing director of the company’s European, Middle East and Africa region, said: “This survey not only shows the significance of leadership training, but it also proves workers need to be trained at all stages of their careers.”
