‘Real’ learning holds key to future success

Employers need to focus on work-based training because it will contribute
more to company profitability in the future, warned the Industrial Society’s
head of policy research last week.

"Organisations need to spend less on athletes and actors giving frothy
motivational seminars to managers, and more on real learning," said Andy
Westwood.

Speaking at a CIPD seminar in London, Westwood told delegates that
technology will have to be harnessed appropriately. "This should
efficiently spread learning throughout organisations and not just be a new way
of spending more on people at the top," he said.

The seminar brought together six leading commentators from the training and
development field to discuss the future of learning for work.

Among them, Ewart Keep, deputy director of the Economic and Social Research
Council Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, gave a
futuristic view of what the skills system would be like in 2015.

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And Martyn Sloman, CIPD adviser on training and development, spoke of the
new demands placed on training by the advent of e-learning.

The CIPD used the event to launch its book The Future of Learning for Work.  www.cipd.co.uk/publications