Until last year, the managers at sweetmaker Swizzels Matlow had a problem.
Their employees were leaving the company almost as fast as its Derbyshire
factory produced boxes of its Rainbow Drops, Parma Violets and Love Hearts.
Investing in training for a rapidly churning workforce might seem illogical,
but the firm credits it for a marked improvement in staff retention.
“We’ve reversed an enormous problem with staff turnover,” said Tony Salt,
training manager for the firm. “In one department staff turnover has fallen
from 42% to 2%. Training has been key to that.”
Staff retention is just one of the benefits of investing in workforce skills.
The NVQ courses in food and drink, run through the University of Derby
Buxton, have contributed to a range of improvements, including better
productivity, staff motivation and safety awareness, said Salt.
“It has saved the business £60,000 directly in a year but the benefits we
can’t measure are far greater than that. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
The company runs much of its training with the help of Train to Gain, a £1
billion, government-sponsored programme to improve staff skills run by the
Learning and Skills Council. In the year it has been in operation the
programme has helped 88,000 businesses boost efficiency and profits by
skilling up their workforces.
As well as offering help to find funding, Train to Gain provides money for
free training for Level 2 NVQ qualifications and a wide range of programmes
for low-skilled employees through the Skills for Life scheme.
Not every business is taking advantage, however. Despite the free help on
offer, a third of firms that employ fewer than 50 people don’t invest in any
training at all, according to Professor Mike Campbell, director of research
and policy for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.
It can be a costly omission, he said. “There are probably thousands of
companies that have gone out of business that would be alive today if they
had invested more in their people.
“Work we’ve done has shown the failure rate among companies that never gave
their staff any training was 2.5 times higher than those that did. Other
research shows that a 5% rise in the training rate increases gross value
added per employee by 4%.”
Among the reasons cited by businesses for not investing in training is the
fear that their expensively trained people will then defect to a rival. In
reality, retention rates improve with training, said Campbell.
“A lot of the success in training lies in how the skills learnt are deployed
and how people are managed. Linking training and development with your
business processes is very important to success.”
