The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is the professional body for those involved in the management and development of people.  The 2008 Learning and Development survey provides data on current and emerging trends and issues in learning and development. This year CIPD focused on some important issues facing the profession: employee skills; current and future learning and development practices; perceptions of e-learning; and the role of coaching. They also provide benchmark information on trends in workplace learning and training spend.

Below I will outline the summary of key findings.

Employee Skills

• Two in five (39%) respondents feel their learning and development activity has been influenced by the Leitch Review of Skills: Prosperity for all in the global economy: world class skills (2006). Around two in five have also considered or would consider implementing initiatives such as Train to Gain (44%) and signing the Employer Skills Pledge (47%).
• More organisations feel it is the Government’s responsibility (87%) to raise educational standards among young people before they enter the workforce rather than employers’ responsibility to raise literacy/numeracy standards within the workforce (57%). Sixty-two per cent feel the Government should prioritise funding on basic/lower-level skills.
• Compared with two years ago, organisations are now requiring a broader range of skills (61%) and a higher level of skills (40%). The key skills that employers class as very important include interpersonal (79%) and communication skills (68%). However, 66% of organisations feel that new employees currently lack both communication/ interpersonal skills and management/leadership skills. Yet, these are also the same skills that organisations feel will be required to meet business objectives in the future.
• One-third of employers have a graduate training scheme. The main areas included in these schemes include coaching and/or mentoring (85%) and project assignments (81%).

Learning and development – the future

• The majority of organisations have experienced change over the last few years in delivering learning and development, with the most significant change concerning management development in the form of new programmes to develop the role of line managers (72%).
• Indeed, the crucial role of line managers highlighted in previous surveys is reinforced this year, with the majority being involved in determining learning and development needs (86%) and half predicting line managers will have greater responsibility for learning and development over the next five years (49%).
• On the whole, learning and development managers have accurately forecast changes in learning and development practices; e-learning, coaching/ mentoring and in-house development programmes were all previously highlighted as growth areas. In-house development programmes (61%) and coaching by line managers (53%) are both now used more than previously.
• However, the expected use of e-learning has possibly been overanticipated, with less than half (47%) using more e-learning and a quarter (26%) saying they don’t use or no longer use e-learning. This is possibly because few feel it is the most effective learning and development practice (7%).

E-Learning

• Nonetheless, over half (57%) of organisations use e-learning, while nearly half tend to agree that e-learning is the most important development in training in the past few decades. The vast majority (82%) of public sector organisations use e-learning compared with just 42% of private sector companies.
• There is some indication that e-learning will be increasingly used as a training tool, with 29% saying that in the next three years between 25% and 50% of all training will be delivered via e-learning.
• More than three-quarters (79%) of respondents feel e-learning is not a substitute for classroom-based learning, while the vast majority (92%) feel that e-learning demands a new attitude to learning on the part of learners.
• Almost all (95%) feel that e-learning is more effective when combined with other forms of learning.

Coaching

• Seventy-one per cent of organisations undertake coaching activities, with a similar proportion (72%) finding coaching to be an effective tool.
• However, the purpose of coaching would appear to vary according to whom coaching is offered. Thus, within organisations that offer coaching to all of their employees, the purpose of this coaching is demonstrably used for general personal development (79%) and to remedy poor performance (74%), whereas within organisations that offer coaching only to managers, the emphasis for the purpose of coaching shifts towards its positioning as part of a wider management and leadership development programme.
• The bulk of the responsibility for delivering coaching lies with line managers coaching those who report to them (36%) and to HR and/or learning, training and development specialists (30%).
• The main methods used for evaluating the effectiveness of coaching include: through observation of changes (42%) and reviews of objectives conducted with line managers, coach and coachee (42%).

Economic influences on learning and development

• More organisations report facing similar (44%) economic circumstances in the past 12 months than those reporting either worse (33%) or better (22%) circumstances.
• However, the public sector continues to be gloomier than the private sector, with 53% reporting worse economic circumstances in the past 12 months, 45% reporting a cut in training funds and only 13% experiencing an increase in funding.
• Larger organisations – that is, those with more than 5,000 employees – also have a gloomy outlook, with 44% reporting worse conditions and 39% saying they have received a decrease in funding.
• Seventy-seven per cent of voluntary sector respondents report that funding for training has remained stable or increased, compared with 75% in the private sector and 54% in the public sector.

Training Spends & Budgets

• Seventy-seven per cent of organisations have a training budget.
• Voluntary sector organisations continue to spend more per employee per year on training, compared with the private sector and with the public sector.
• Those employing less than 250 continue to spend far more per head on training than those with more than 5,000 employees.

The full report is available here and give us all the motivation we need to ensure that Learn Skills addresses a key need in the UK economy through the provision of web-based skills and compliance training for the workforce.

Ireland – 25th June 2008 – Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Mary Coughlan TD, launched two new FÁS initiatives:

• Training of Workers with Lower Levels of Qualification
• SME Management Development

Ireland’s future economic prosperity will depend on the development of the skills of our workforce. We must continually upgrade the skills of those at work. It is through this process of constantly upskilling our workers that Irish companies will be able to secure a long term competitive advantage.

The SME Management Development initiative is targeted on the need for businesses to also develop the skills of their workforce and therefore enhance productivity and competitiveness. The training programmes are being constructed in such a way that the current and prospective, growth-related, needs of SMEs in Ireland are kept fully up to-date.

Speaking at the launch of the FÁS initiatives the Tanaiste said “In recent years, the Government has significantly increased funding through FÁS for the training and up skilling of persons in employment. This reflects our commitment to improving national competitiveness through training and development. These new FÁS initiatives, which over the next two years will deliver training and development to over 11,500 employed people, collectively represent a total investment of €19 million in the development of our workforce”.

The Tanaiste added “Experience has shown that well-trained managers, who realise the benefits of up-skilling for themselves, are also more likely to recognise the value of across-the-board training for other levels of the workforce.

This in turn facilitates and drives training for workers with lower qualifications. Therefore the suites of courses being launched today are in fact complementary to each other.

The initiatives being launched represent a major step forward in implementing Government policy in this regard, with the objective of ensuring that we have the best educated and most highly trained workforce possible in Ireland going forward”.

FÁS Director General Rody Molloy emphasised “It is those people at the lower end of the labour market who are now the most vulnerable to competition from low cost economies. It is their jobs, which can be most easily replicated. Many of these workers have low levels of skills and educational attainments. This has got to change. In future the key to long-term employment will be through a process of lifelong learning, where the skills of Irish workers, both of jobseekers and those already in employment, will undergo continuous upgrading throughout their careers and not just before they enter the workforce”

Source: FAS Press Release

UK – 25th August, 2008 –  The Institute for Learning (IfL) is calling all teachers in an LSC-funded provision not to miss the 30 September 2008 deadline for registration as a teaching professional.

In September 2007, the government introduced regulations aimed at ensuring that the further education and skills sector has a qualified, professional workforce with up-to-date subject and teaching skills.

Work-based learning providers that deliver FE provision through a contract or funding agreement with the Learning and Skills Council are required to ensure that all their teaching staff:

• register as members of IfL
• undertake at least 30 hours’ continuing professional development (CPD) each year (prorated for part-time teachers)
• abide by the Code of Professional Practice

IfL was formed in 2002 and is the professional body for teachers, trainers, tutors and student teachers in the further education sector, including work-based learning.  As an independent body, IfL is run by an elected council and works closely with several sector organisations, unions and employer bodies.  The aim of IfL is to support members and to continue raising the status of teaching practitioners in the sector.

The government will meet the full cost of standard registration for teachers in LSC-funded institutions; teachers will not be asked to pay any fees when registering. Teachers, trainers and tutors who do not work on LSC-funded programmes are also welcome, but will need to pay their own annual subscription.

Source: e-skills UK

Learn Skills will provide a range of high quality web-based teacher training courses that will address the needs of teachers from the viewpoint of CPD.

Without a doubt, today’s world is knowledge-based and depends on the rapid exchange of information. Countries that are equipped with the technology and knowledge to participate in the new electronic world are major players in its socio-cultural and economic developments. Education is changing, too. With the advent of multimedia technologies and the Internet, it is now possible to reach people who would otherwise have no access to certain courses or educational opportunities.

Electronic learning, or e–Learning as it has come to be known, makes use of the Internet and digital technologies to deliver instruction synchronously or asynchronously to anyone who has access to a computer and an Internet connection.

By some estimates, between 800,000,000 and 1,500,000,000 people world-wide understand English. Approximately 350,000,000 people use English as their mother tongue (mainly in the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa). Some 400 million use English as a second language (in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, and the Philippines). At least another 150 million people use English with some degree of competence. Furthermore, it is an official language in more than 60 countries (Crystal 1992, p.121). With such a large number of people using English, it is not surprising that English has become the lingua franca of the modern world.

In the current state of affairs, the global dominance of English in commerce, science, and technology has created the need for an ever increasing number of people to learn to communicate in the English language. There is a market demand for English courses on a global scale, and the English language teaching industry is thriving.

As English is experienced across different linguistic contexts, it may be experienced primarily as a language of education, or higher education, as well as in official contexts, popular culture, and the local vernacular. It may be regarded as a language of social and economic advancement, or it may be seen as an imposition or a necessary evil. However it is seen, the English language is used across the globe in countless contexts to very different effects.

Thus, proficiency in English is seen as essential for participation in the global arena, particularly in the economic domain, in which transnational corporations conduct business and trade beyond the national borders. In addition, the global spread of the English language is further facilitated by American media products of mass communication such as videos, music, news, magazines, TV programs, and so on. The dominance of English on the Internet reinforces the flow of international information in English, and affirms the structure of global communication. English is the most widely used and taught language in the world, and it is accepted easily almost anywhere.

Second-language acquisition and intercultural learning can be greatly facilitated through e-Learning. At present, e-Learning is itself becoming an important global business not only in the commercial sector, but also in the support that national governments are giving to educational institutions to increase their export income. There is a drive for change brought on by technological innovation to which governments and institutions of higher learning are responding at a rapid pace.

Learn Skills aims to address these needs outlined above through the provision of web-based language learning in English initially, and then to expand this range.

Courtesy: In Global Peace Through The Global University System, 2003 Ed. by T. Varis, T. Utsumi, and W. R. Klem, University of Tampere, Hameenlinna, Finland

Galway, Ireland – 28th August 2008 – Learn Skills, a web-based skills and compliance training company is pleased to announce that from September they will be offering InfoSource Learning’s “How To Master” online content training libraries to corporate, academic and government clients.

With this new partnership, Learn Skills’ corporate and government clients will now have access to content training libraries covering areas such as the Microsoft Suite; including Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Access, 2000 up to 2007. These libraries feature a unique, content-rich environment of interactive, self-paced learning and testing.  Learners will gain experience, retain information, and increase productivity by training in these simulated software environments.

“This partnership will address many of the key concerns that our clients have concerning Digital Literacy by providing them with high quality, up-to-date online courses increases skills levels in this area, said Sean Griffin, Co-Founder of Learn Skills.  “With InfoSource Learning as our partner, our online training library will make it incredibly easy for our customers to start training and address key areas for improving ICT skills and performance.”

These courses can be purchased on an individual basis or as part of an overall bundle of courses for larger numbers of employees through the Learn Skills LMS delivery model.  Some of the key courses that can be purchased through the Learn Skills platform include:

• Internet & Computing Core Certification (IC3)
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Microsoft Office 2003
• Microsoft Office 2002 (XP)
• Windows Operating Systems & Internet

Tom Dalton, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at InfoSource Learning stated, “We firmly believe in the value of our unique training and are very excited to have the opportunity to partner with an excellent company such as Learn Skills.”

Ireland – 11th June, 2008 –  AONTAS, the National Adult Learning Organisation, today repeated calls for the government to take action following the increase in those signing on the live register as outlined by the CSO . The figures reflect the highest increase in the number of those signing on the live register since July 1999 with the figure now standing in excess of 200,000.

Reacting to the statistics, Berni Brady, AONTAS Director urged the government to turn its immediate attention to the issue of upskilling those members of the workforce most at risk of unemployment in the event of an economic downturn. ‘Although we were aware that those employed in the construction sector were most at risk, the fact that more women are now signing on the live register is deeply worrying.’

Yesterday, the INOU issued a statement outlining their concern at the lack of government response to these trends.

‘A practical response to this issue involves providing opportunities for those in employment to upskill within the workplace’, continued Ms Brady. This would enable workers to make the transition from one sector to another, and to consider alternative employment options. AONTAS is concerned at the lack of progress regarding the ambitious targets identified within the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs report. Given that economists have predicted another increase in unemployment over the next six to twelve months period, the government must take heed, and act accordingly, through a speedier implementation of the National Skills Strategy‘ she concluded.

AONTAS is the National Adult Learning Organisation. AONTAS is a non-government membership organisation, established in 1969. The organisation’s mission is to ensure that every adult in Ireland has access to appropriate and affordable learning opportunities throughout their lives, thus enabling them to contribute to and participate in the economic, social, civic and cultural development of Irish society. AONTAS is a registered charity and a company limited by guarantee. AONTAS represents over 600 members, ranging from statutory providers of adult education, such as VECs and third level institutions, to voluntary providers of community education, to individual adult learners and those with a general interest in adult education. The role of AONTAS is to work towards improving the adult education sector in Ireland through policy development, promoting the benefits of adult education and research.
The Expert Group on Future Skills Needs was established in 1997. The group advises government on future skills requirements and associated labour market issues that impact on national potential for enterprise and employment growth. In March 2007 the group published a report entitled ‘Tomorrow’s Skills : Towards a National Skills Strategy’ which included an outline of the skills required for Ireland to develop over the period to 2020 as a competitive, innovation-driven, knowledge-based, participative and inclusive economy.

Source: AONTAS Press Release

Ireland – Tuesday, 5th August, 2008 – Cllr. Pat Whelan has called for the up-skilling of Irish workers after it emerged this week that 90% of new jobs created in the last 12 months were being filled by foreign nationals.

“This information from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) bucks the widely held belief, that many migrant workers will leave Ireland for other EU countries as our economy slows down, and that a large proportion of new jobs being created in Ireland will be taken up by the Irish workforce,” said Cllr. Whelan.

“The biggest share of new jobs are being created in high value sectors like financial and other business services, which grew by 26,300 in the year to the first quarter of 2008, and accounted for almost half (48.9%) of all jobs created. It had been assumed that Irish workers would take up most of these positions. But the CSO data indicates that foreign nationals will be recruited for a significant proportion of these new positions,” the Town Councillor continued.

“This trend needs to be fully researched by Government, as it could well be a warning about Ireland’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. There is no doubt that some of this increase in jobs uptake by migrant workers is due to their improving English language skills, leaving lower skilled jobs and moving up the value chain in line with their educational qualifications,” he said.

“Some of this is as a result of the increasing cost of childcare, as two thirds of the jobs created in the 12 month period were part time and 70% of these jobs were taken up by women. Migrant women have a lower dependency ratio and as a result are in a better position to take up employment.

“But the more worrying concern is that this is partly a result of the Government’s failure to properly re-skill our indigenous workforce to compete for these growth areas in employment. This trend cannot be ignored and it is imperative that the Government acts now, rather than sitting on its hands.

“More migrants moving up the value chain will certainly benefit the economy, but if it continues without being properly evaluated we could be skilling other economies to facilitate the transfer of jobs from Ireland. The Government has consistently buried its head in the sand on this issue, hoping that the economy will rectify itself. But the country needs clear solutions now that will benefit our economic potential in the future.”

Cllr. Whelan said the government needs to identify and up-skill vulnerable workers, expand training for those activities that still offer good prospects, such as professional services, health-related caring professions, IT, home energy efficiency technologies, and HGV drivers, use funding from the NDP and European Social Fund to fund a massive ‘eco-training’ programme for 10,000 skilled workers laid off from the construction sector, and ensure that changes to community childcare supports do not disadvantage those already in employment.

Source: Westmeath Examiner

Learn Skills, the Irish web-based training company that specialises in skills and compliance training, focused on upskilling employees and management has a comprehensive range of courses for anyone interested in upskilling to enhance their career prospects.

UK – May 12th, 2008 – The skills survey report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development reveals that in 45 per cent of public sector organizations there has been a cut in training budgets over the past 12 months. The indications are that the continued post-Gershon squeeze is encouraging employers to reduce the head count and to cut costs across personnel activities.

Voluntary sector organisations continue to spend more per employee per year on training, compared with both the private and public sectors.  With 77 per cent in the sector reporting that funding for training has remained stable or increased, compared with 75 per cent in the private sector and 54 per cent in the public sector.

The report also shows a disconnect between what government is offering employers and what they feel they need from young people coming out of school, college or university.  Literacy and numeracy are still concerns for employers, but also there is a need for the so-called soft-skills.  Two thirds of respondent organisations feel that new employees lack both communication and interpersonal skills and over half report a shortfall in management and leadership skills.

“Learn Skills can offer employers web-based skills and compliance training to address these key concerns, by giving them access to a comprehensive course catalog”, said Sean Griffin, Co-Founder of Learn Skills, “and the Learn Skills platform can deliver both cost savings and consistent quality instruction to all employees and management resulting in increased and enhanced performance.”