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‘The UK shows no signs of catching up in its investment in training and development
with its major competitors in Europe and every sign of falling behind its new
industrial competitors from South East Asia’
(Aston & Felstead, 2001: 186)
The quoted sentence above encourages me to look at the real situation of training and development in the UK whether it is true according to the conclusion or not. In order to examine that, it is ineluctable to explore the contribution that each actor in the system gives to training and development. Here, I focus exclusively on the investment of government and employer, which represent almost all investment spent in training and development of the country. All the pictures of its investment are proposed in the first part of this paper.
In the second part, I answer the first question about the inferior record of investment as a cause of concern for UK employers on the ground of theoretical advantages of training and development. However, the arguments of groups who do not agree with its merit are also presented. ... I group those factors into four facets and explain how each part can impact on decision to invest in training and development of the employers. The final part is covered by the role of government as a powerful external pressure that induces employers to invest more in order to elevate the UK poor record on investment in training and development.
There has been a common view that the UK lags behind other countries in investment in training and development. This has been documented in many reports, publications and several books on training for many years. Although I cannot demonstrate the updated comparative statistics about investment in training and development of those mentioned countries in this paper, I do provide several evidences that can project the picture of investment of those countries quite well.
There are many evidences that can be mentioned to make us see the UK as low investment in training and development. ... As we can see, roles of government through the use of several public policies in major competitors of the UK are outstandingly strong. In France, for example, the decision-making is centralized and the enforcement of training is bound by statutory requirements. For example, every employer has to provide paid training leave for their employees and is mandated to spend certain proportion, which is set by the government, of their budget on training or to finance the continuation of professional education in case that the employers hire more than ten workers. These regulations imply the rate of investment in their training and development quite well since all employers are forced to spend part of their budget on training, which is bound by law (Noble, 1997). ... Along with the development in demand, the governments also sponsor some education and training programmes to increase supply in skill in order to support the move of economy to higher value-added production. ... The actions of governments to sponsor training and development as such, as well as a role as a powerful catalyst for employers to invest more on training and development, can clearly represent high record in training and development of these countries.
Besides government, roles of other related institutions as a force to push employers to provide in training can also hint us the extent to which country invests on training and development. ... They circulate information, provide a forum for deliberation among employers, and provide baseline monitoring of companies that fail to meet minimal training standards. Unions play parts in the negotiation of the content of skills to guarantee that general and portable skills will be included in training and in keeping initial wages low to nourish the provision of training (Ashton&Felstead, 2001). ... With such coordination, plus the ‘dual apprenticeship system’ of Germany, there is no doubt why the level of investment in training and development of German stands out in international comparison.
In the case of UK, due to the belief in market-based system of several governments, most public policies on training and development have been primarily based on deregulation and voluntary practices (Finegold & Soskice, 1988). Although there were some attempts to enhance the provision of employers in training and development, -e. ... the introduction of the Industrial Training Boards (ITBs) to monitor the level and quality of training and impose the levy/grant system on employers, the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) as a quasi-governmental corporatist body under the direction of employers, union and the states, and the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) with an intention of being employer-led, locally-based and market-focused for training- ,government intervention was taken at minimal level.
Approximate Word count = 3591
Approximate Pages = 14.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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