4 Responses

1. Check last week’s questions
   Jerry

   There was a very similar question posted last week on these pages at https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/item/85602 or you can scroll through the questions listed to find it). It’s always worth doing a search of these pages first to see whether anyone has offered any useful advice earlier.

   Stephanie Phillips
   Editor, TrainingZONE

2. Maybe I’m biased…
   Jerry, but I have been reading article after article about how appropriate and effective training can increase the bottom-line profits of a business. Therefore maybe your company should be considering not what is best practice but can they afford NOT to spend as much as possible on training their people AND their senior management.

   Its an ever-changing world out there and everyone needs to keep up with current technology, thinking, skills, and processes. E.g. Nurses have to carry out 35 hours of study every year to keep up with new developments – thats one working week. That seems pretty reasonable to me. It could mean that businesses HAVE to consider maximising the training they provide for their personel or they will not be competitive enough.

   Its up to those providing the training – both internal and external providers – to make that training appropriate, effective, finacially viable, and enjoyable.

   Pardon the rant but ‘best practice’ in training terms usually means how little and not how much.

   Nigel

3. its not size that counts…
   I was the person who posted a similar item a while ago. Essentially I agree with all the comments emphasising the point that it is not how much you spend on training that counts but the extent to which your culture and management processes support learning. However, it is always useful to look at benchmark data as one input into your decision making. I would be interested in any information you manage to glean.

4. Percentages
   It is hard to say precisely what constitutes ‘best practice’ merely in terms of percentage spend. However, I have surveyed the surveys and have some ball-park figures. The average training budget is sometimes measured as a percentage of salary spend and in a typical organisation this averages at about 2.8% (but ranges from 1% to 7% and the most successful companies are above the average). This tends to include the direct cost of training, excluding a) overheads; b) workplace learning such as coaching; and c) other development such as conferences. Some FMCGs express it as a percentage of turnover but I have no reliable figures on this.