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

Limitations

There are inevitably limitations to surveys which potentially could access a very large population such as employers. 173 employers is a very small proportion of the total number of employers in Australia; and 107 is a small proportion of the total RTO population, which was 4,601 in 2014 (according to Stanwick, 2016). The distribution of responses by industry sector to the Employer survey correspond very closely with ABS data on distribution of employment across the economy (allowing for some differences of classification (profile.id, 2016) The distribution across employer size also provide some grounds for generalisability, as does the fact that some of the responses align well with available national data on employer training (e.g. NCVER, 2013). For the RTO survey, the distribution by type of provider also aligns reasonably well with the national distribution of RTO type given that non-TAFE RTO sizes are considerably smaller than those in TAFE (Harris, Simons & McCarthy 2006).

No claim is made that the results are representative of the entire population of Australian industry or RTOs. The findings from the interviews aligned well with the survey data. This fact, and the positive feedback from the project reference group when the findings were presented to them, indicates that the data are trustworthy.

As discussed above, the time comparisons had some drawbacks, including that industry areas for responses varied quite a bit from 2003 to 2015 for the Employer survey (although there was good matching on employer size). The main limitation for the comparison for the RTO survey was the different nature of the respondents, i.e. firstly that the 2002 responses were almost all from TAFE, and that the 2015 survey involved only one respondent per RTO while the 2002 survey had included multiple respondents from some institutions.

Detailed findings from the employer survey

In this section, the overall results from the 2015 survey of employers are discussed, including an analysis by size of employer. The section concludes with a discussion of variations between employers who were current users of nationally recognised training, and those who were not. Detailed tables showing analysis of quantitative and qualitative data by size of employer are provided after the main body of the support documents.

Nature of the responding organisations

The employing organisations were of differing sizes, with the size distribution purposefully selected to match the survey administered in 2003 (Smith et al 2005). The distribution of employees was as follows:

29.2% (50): 1-49 employees (‘micro’)

10.5% (18): 50-99 employees (‘small’)

25.7% (44): 100-499 employees (‘medium’)

34.5% (59): 500 employees or more (‘large’).

11 of the large organisations had more than 3000 employees, with a small number employing in the tens of thousands.

There was a good variety of firm structures, with just over one-third located at single sites, just over one-third operating on between two and nine sites, and one-quarter having 10 or more sites. Not surprisingly, micro companies were less likely to be multi-site, than the other size categories.

Over two-thirds of employees across all organisations were permanent full-time, with a mean of 69.9% in this category, with 14.8% permanent part-time, 8.7% casual and 6.7% contractors. There was little difference in this distribution among organisations of different sizes.

The distribution by industry is seen in Table 3 below. While category 8 seems large, it includes several industry sectors which were consolidated in the earlier project’s results and therefore retained for this one. The distribution aligns closely with distribution of employment across the Australian economy in the 2011 national census.

Table 3 Industry areas of survey respondents

	Industry area	Number	Percent
1.	Primary (includes mining)	8	5.0
2.	Financial services	12	7.5
3.	Other services (includes hospitality)	16	10.0
4.	Communications & IT	8	5.0
5.	Transport and distribution	4	2.5
6.	Sales (wholesale and retail)	20	12.5
7.	Manufacturing	14	8.8
8.	Government/community/ public utilities	33	20.6
9.	Construction and civil engineering	13	8.1
10.	Health	13	8.1
11.	Consultancy	5	3.1
12.	Education	14	8.8
	Total	160	100.0

In order to understand the environment in which the employers were operating, we asked a series of questions about their own operations and the external environment, over the past five years:

47.9% of the organisations had expanded their operations, with 44.8% staying about the same

49.4% had added new products or services with 45.7% staying about the same

37.8% had increased employee numbers with 42.7% staying about the same.

Thus the vast majority of the companies were in a healthy state, either expanding or remaining about the same. While 19.5% of organisations reported a fall in employee numbers the small number of organisations reporting a decline in business (only 7.3%) suggests that some companies reporting a decline in employee numbers had in fact simply become more efficient in their use of labour. The disparity was greatest for large companies, which reported the greatest degree of expansion and also above-average decline in employee numbers.

Most companies (almost 90%) were affected by licensing or regulation, with 43% saying they were affected a great deal and 46.7% affected to a certain extent. Large organisations (500+ employees) reported a greater effect from these factors.

Table 4 shows the organisations’ evaluation of the changes in technology, skill needs and the competitive environment over the previous five years.

Table 4 Recent changes in operating environments, as reported by the employers

	Use of technology in the industry	Skill needs of the industry	Skill needs of the organisation	Intensity of the competitive environment for the organisation
Increased rapidly	23.2%	17.2%	17.8%	28.2%
Increased steadily	62.2%	57.1%	60.7%	45.4%
Undergone no real change	14.0%	24.5%	20.2%	24.5%
Declined	0.6%	1.2%	1.2%	1.8%
Total	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%	100.0%

Note: n=163

Nearly all (85%) of the organisations reported increases in the use of technology in their industries, mainly reporting a ‘steady’ rather than ‘rapid’ increase. Three-quarters reported increased skill needs in their industries and their companies alike. Skill needs were judged to be increasing less rapidly than technology use, and one-quarter and one-fifth respectively reported no real change in skill needs in the industry or their own companies. Three-quarters reported an increase in the competitive environment for their businesses, with over one-quarter stating that things had become much more competitive.

Analysed by employer size, small and medium employers reported lower increases in technology use in their industries; and also a lower proportion of these companies reported increases in skill needs. Large companies were more likely to report an increase in skill needs, albeit steady rather than rapid in comparison with the average. Medium and large companies were most likely to report that the environment had become much more competitive (36% and 40% respectively), with micro companies least likely to report changes.