Continuity and change: employers’ training practices and partnerships with training providers

Employers who use nationally recognised training and those who do not

In order to find out differences between those employers who currently used nationally recognised training and those who did not, we undertook a cross-tabulation of a number of key questions against a question which asked whether the organisation had provided or purchased (using its own or government or other funds) national accredited training in the current and previous calendar year (Q 4.7). The 153 respondents to this question were split almost 50-50. (74 had provided such training and 79 had not).

Some key differences in the characteristics of the two groups were as follows:

Users of NRT were more likely to have a number of sites (only 25.7% were single site compared with 46.8% of non-users)

Users of NRT had a more diverse employment structure - a lower proportion of full-time permanent workers with a mean of 67.0% full-time permanent as opposed to 73.0% of non-users (although a slightly larger proportion of permanent part-time workers, on average, compared with non-users)

Users of NRT were more likely to be affected by regulation or licensing (52.7% of users were affected ‘a great deal’ compared with 35.4% of non-users)

Over the previous five years, users of NRT were twice as likely as non-users to report having expanded their operations and their number of employees, and 50% more likely to have added new products or services

The users of NRT were much more likely to say they were in industries where, over the past five years, the use of technology had increased rapidly, and where the skills needs of both the industry and the organisation had increased rapidly.

There were also some clear differences in their answers about the training that they offered. Users of NRT considered that they trained more than similar organisations in their industry (47.8% as opposed to 22.8%) and were much more likely to say that the amount of training they offered to employees had increased greatly over the previous five years (28.4% as opposed to 3.8%). When asked about the drivers of training the following key differences emerged (Table 12).

Table 12: Training drivers: Differences between users and non-users of nationally recognised training

Whether major or minor driver	Users of NRT more likely to report as being ‘very important’ (more than 5 percentage point difference)	About the same percentage of ‘very important’ responses from users and non-users (within 5 percentage point difference)
Major (Over 45% of ‘more likely’ group stating ‘very important’)	‘Other’ (non-licensing) regulatory requirements OH&S Business strategy Business/organisation change	New technology Licensing requirements Quality
Minor (Less than 45% stating ‘very important’)		Market pressures Demand from employees Required skills not on the external labour market

Note: This table is derived from Q2.3: ‘In your business how important are the following reasons for the training of your existing staff?’ (10 choices plus ‘other’ provided). Options were ‘not important’, ‘of some importance’ and ‘very important’.

When respondents were asked to choose the most important driver, almost one-third (31.2%) of non-users selected ‘quality’, compared with only 8.6% of users. Other than this, ‘new technology’ was the most common first choice, with 21.4% of users and 18.2% of non-users selecting this option.

In training structures, users of nationally recognised training were more than twice as likely (71.6% as opposed to 32.9%) to have a dedicated training department or section. They were consistently about 50% more likely to have each of the following features: a written training plan, a training manager, workplace trainers or assessors, an in-house online learning system, and evaluation of impact of training. They were at least twice as likely to have a separate training budget, a training committee and to undertake training needs analyses.

Recent users of nationally recognised training were more likely to purchase training from other sources, such as equipment suppliers and employer associations, with about one-third of non-users reporting purchasing ‘some’ training or ‘a great deal’ from these sources, compared with almost half of users of NRT. Not surprisingly, users of NRT were more likely to agree with the benefits of using external training. Non-users were also less likely to provide informal training opportunities and less likely to provide each of the provided choices of types of training, such as induction and supervisory training. There was no appreciable difference in the proportions of users compared with non-users reporting using national competency standards for other purposes, except for a greater proportion of non-users of NRT using them for non-accredited training, perhaps suggesting that they may have previously been using NRT and then stopped using it but continued with the training, and a greater proportion of users applying competency standards to performance management.

In terms of understanding of VET, only 30.4% of non-users said they had no sources of knowledge (interestingly, 12.2% of users also said they had none, suggesting the expertise resided elsewhere in the organisation, or the systems had been inherited). When asked to nominate the most important source, responses were similar between the groups, with TAFE or other RTOs and employer associations being the top two. Around 10% of users nominated each of the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training or their State Department as the next most important, while non-users nominated Group Training organisations and government web sites such as training.gov.au or the Apprenticeships web site as the next most important. The latter finding presumably reflects the fact that some non-users (n=12) were employing apprentices and trainees, although they did not currently use nationally recognised training for existing workers.