Employers need to think of training and development more strategically

IRISH companies are assessing the aptitudes and retraining existing staff to help them bridge skills gaps and boost business performance, a useful and efficient tool in addition to recruitment.

Ryan Shanks, managing director of Accenture’s talent and organisation practice in Ireland, cites one Irish-based technology client who used a novel approach to boost the performance of sales staff. What started out as a training exercise led rapidly to enhanced sales and profits.

Ryan Shanks said: “This company did a competency assessment test to see what their top sales people knew, the things they had in common that made them perform better than others. Essentially, the study looked at what they did with their time that made them so successful.

“Common factors included the greater amount of time they spent on their customers rather than on administration; and knowing their business value, knowing the value a customer can get from using their products rather than just having an in-depth knowledge of the products.

“So the company then built a mentoring programme, followed by classroom training which was led by those internal sales leaders. This way, the sales teams learned the behaviours of the company’s own top sales personnel.”

Mr Shanks also cited the example of the Hilton Hotels group, who gave iPads to their hotel maintenance staff, who used videos which the group posted on YouTube as a real-time guide when repairing specific shower-heads and other regular repair jobs. Such pragmatic ‘learning by doing’ solutions are also becoming increasingly frequent in the Irish workplace.

Accenture Ireland, which is part of the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing firm, recently surveyed 100 large and medium employers and 1,000 members of the general population to gauge views on skills, training and development in the Irish workplace.

The responses were broadly encouraging, but also served up some dislocation between the way training is viewed positively, yet in many cases is not used to its full potential to effect growth for companies. Core issues include defining effective goals for training, plus communicating these goals to staff. Many staff were not even aware of the training available to them.

While 71% of employers indicated they have training programmes in place, almost half of the workers in the study stated that their company does not have, or they are not aware of, a learning and development agenda.

Similarly, 71% of employers say they have a dedicated budget for training and development but nearly half (45%) are unaware of how much their organisations invest here. Encouragingly, 32% of employers believe they are primarily responsible for developing their employees’ skills and nearly half (44%) expect their average staff hours spent on training to increase during 2013.

“More than 80% of employers said their training and development budget was the same or more for 2013, so the spending is continuing,” said Ryan Shanks. “And 71% have a training policy and a training programme, but of the 1,000 employees we surveyed, many were unaware of this, and 41% said they’d done eight hours or less training during 2012, while 28% said they’d had zero training.

“So is it just that the employers are painting a rosier picture? Are employers doing enough to deliver key skills? One part of the problem may be communication by employers. Some 65% of employees didn’t understand the skills that employers were looking for, while there was also a low awareness of the availability of training being offered.

“One recommendation is for employers to think of training and development more strategically. I don’t think employers are fully aware of the skills that need to be developed in the next few years. Tech skills will be important, but so too will be softer skills or ‘aptitudes’.

“Employers are telling us that leadership is a key skill as they seek to develop and break into new areas and new markets. 45% said it is hard to find people with leadership skills now, while 57% said leadership will be even more important over the next five years.

“In these tough times, with freezes on recruitment, the need for productivity etc, there will be increasing pressure on senior managers to get the most out of staff and really lead them.”

A recent Forfas study showed new sales skills will be critical to Irish companies seeking to breaking into new overseas markets. Mr Shanks said skills awareness is also central to the global drive of Irish brands such as Kerry Group, Primark and Paddy Power, requiring skills that weren’t needed five or 10 years ago.

Despite high unemployment, many companies across a range of sectors are finding it hard to recruit external people with the right skills. Many are retraining internally, in many cases creating entry level vacancies as staff climb the ranks.

A few years ago, Accenture Ireland began a drive to fill 100 jobs in digital analytics. Finding those people externally proved harder than they’d expected.

“We’ve been ramping up these jobs in recent years,” said Ryan Shanks. “It has proven difficult to fill these roles, so we’ve come back to our own employees, many of whom have found analytics to be quite interesting, so we’ve sent people for training in this area.

“It has been very positive, having people with a mix of business and consulting skills and now adding analytics. Other companies are doing similar initiatives, so we’re building a bigger talent pool in analytics, which must be better than poaching people from one another.”

Mr Shanks also cited the recent case of a Dublin software company which had its own proprietary code, but then decided to move instead towards Java. Initially, they thought they’d have to do considerable retraining.

When they asked their staff, it turns out they had those skills anyway because they were all creating their own websites at home at night just for fun. Once again, the solution to the key skills gap already existed internally. In the case of companies expanding, retraining from within then also creates vacancies at entry level, which can help reduce Ireland’s dole queues.

Of those unemployed among the 1,000 general public members surveyed by Accenture and Amarach, 93%of those unemployed cited a gap in their current skillset and experience which is blocking their ability to return to work; 40% of the general population surveyed intend to undertake training in order to find work.