According to a survey by CITB-Construction Skills on Employer Attitudes and Motivations to Learning and the negtavie economic climate has lead to majority cuts in training and development in the contruction industry.
The company surveyed more than 1,500 business in construction The findings showed that 26% of the organizations involved in construction work had made cuts to training programs in 2010, with 18% of organizations expected to see more cutsin 2011.
The Development programs centred on enhancing productivity with specialized work were hit the worst with with 16%. While training programs focussing on employee health and security saw a cut of around 8%, it was followed by a 2% cut in training programs around developing employees with their managerial skill and administrative department.
However on the positive side, the general mind set of employers is not that bleak given that 24% of the surveyed company heads feel a need for a more robust development program in the time ahead. Around one in every ten surveyed spoke about enhancing their training programs last year. Most of these i.e. 41% improved training focussing on honing employee productivity while a quarter had started to give their business an upper hand in sustaining the competition. 9% of the increase in training programs was purely necessitated because of the need to multitask their staff to meet new challenges coming from several in the line of business.
Speaking on the findings, Mark Farrar rued the fact that training programs are always the first to be impacted during recession. The Chief Executive of the CITB-Construction Skills commented on how the investment on training programs in 2011 could nosedive further in spite of a general awareness of its contribution in improving staff skill-sets and company productivity.
