3 Responses

1. Comparisons on a revenue basis should be treated with caution
   Company accounts show the average no. of people employed, but they do not show training costs. Therefore, you are probably relying on the goodwill of others to discover this info. Comparisons on a revenue basis should also be treated with caution; unless the business operates in a similar industry sector with similar profit margins, the results could prove misleading and may not help your business case. Total training costs per employee may be a better comparative.

2. Try Skillsbase
   The DfES publish information on the ‘Costs to Employers of Providing Job-related Training’, via Skillsbase the labour market information database.

   Although I would advise against drawing too many conclusions from comparisons of this type, you can access the latest available figures at:
   http://www.skillsbase.dfes.gov.uk/Database/Database.asp?sect=12&page=3

   You will see in ‘training expenditure as a proportion of sales (or budget in the public sector)’, the Employers Skill Survey 2001 found that for around one in five (19 per cent) of establishments training expenditure was less than 0.05 per cent of sales turnover. Overall, the mean expenditure was 2 per cent of sales turnover.

   The estimated average annual cost of providing training per employee was found to be £1330. This figure can be broken down as follows:

   Off-the-job training £820
   Of which – Course related £670
   Other, e.g. seminars, workshops £150
   On-the-job £510

   Jeffrey Brooks
   Institute of Training and Occupational Learning

3. Training Budget
   My company manages the training (and therefore the budget) for a number of construction industry clients. Some do the minimum and two do a lot more than the norm. The latter spend 2% of salary roll, as in housebuilding, revenue is massive but margins less so.