According to a survey by learning innovator Cambridge Online Learning, UK businesses are wasting up to 20% of their training budgets due to employees failing to attend designated business courses. Over half of those organisations who calculated wastage admitted to losses (which could total somewhere between £217m and £871m per year), and only a fifth claim they suffer no financial loss from lack of training attendance.

other Findings

- Key motivators for business managers who buy in training appear to be improved efficiency (86%), business impact (73%) and personal development (73%).

- Key reasons for not buying in training included expense (68%), lack of business benefits (37%) and irrelevance to the employee’s role (37%).

- Three quarters are in agreement that spend on developing employees into better people managers is too limited.

- A third of buyers admit they are unsure of what their training programmes are actually designed to deliver.

- The majority of buyers regularly introduce new training programmes and suppliers to their business. Over a third of organisations introduce new training courses for a quarter of their overall training, whilst one in ten provide 75% new training for their employees.

- The deteriorating economic outlook has had minimal impact on training budgets with three quarters of respondents having the same/higher training budgets this year than in 2001.