British Safety Council

Fact sheet: Workforce training

Employers' legal duties:

The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 requires employers to provide the information, instruction, training and supervision needed to ensure the health and safety of employees at work (so far as is reasonably practicable).
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 expands on this, by identifying situations where health and safety training is particularly important:
- When people start work
- On exposure to new or increased risks
- Where existing skills may have become rusty or need updating.
(NB: Training must be provided during working hours and not at the expense of employees).

Source: Health & Safety Executive

Training statistics:

Over a third of employers (35%) do not offer any training to their employees.
Nearly two fifths of employees (39%) had not received any training in the past 12 months
7% of businesses have hard-to-fill vacancies, and 4% cite skill shortages among applicants as at least part of the reason
The main skills lacking among applicants are:
- Technical and practical skills
- Customer handling skills
- Oral communication
- Problem-solving skills
- Team working.

Source: The National Employers Skills Survey 2005 (NESS) produced by the Learning and Skills Council

Skill gaps:

Definition: Skill gaps occur when employers report having employees who are not fully proficient at their job

16% of employers are affected by skill gaps in their workforce
6% of the total workforce is described as not being fully proficient

Source: The National Employers Skills Survey 2005 (NESS) produced by the Learning and Skills Council

Reasons why staff lack skills:

Lack of experience/recently recruited (71%)
Staff lack motivation (32%)
Failure to train and develop staff (23%)
Inability of the workforce to keep up with change (23%)
Recruitment problems (20%)
High staff turnover (17%)

Source: The National Employers Skills Survey 2005 (NESS) produced by the Learning and Skills Council

Value of training:

“There is a clear link between workplace happiness and training. A quarter of all UK workers have, or would, leave a position because of a lack of training.”
Source: 2007 City & Guilds Happiness Index (annual survey tracking the satisfaction and fulfilment of the country’s workforce)

Employer expenditure on training:

The total employer training expenditure is an estimated £33.3 billion.
Spending is split almost evenly between off- and on-the-job training
Establishments employing fewer than 25 staff spent just over £14 billion on training in the previous 12 months (42% of all training expenditure)
£2.4 billion is spent on fees to external providers of off-the-job training (around 7% of total training costs)
Total training expenditure equates to an average £1,550 per employee.
The annual training spend per trainee is just over £2,500.
On average, employers spend about 25% more on each off-the-job trainee. (£2,165 for off-the-job training vs. £1,530 for on-the-job training). Need to clarify what off and on the job means?

Source: The National Employers Skills Survey 2005 (NESS) produced by the Learning and Skills Council

Training activity:

Businesses which have trained staff over previous 12 months (65%)
Businesses providing off-the-job training in previous 12 months (46%)
Businesses with a training plan (45%)
Businesses with a budget for training (43%)
Employees trained per 1,000 employees 609

Source: The National Employers Skills Survey 2005 (NESS) produced by the Learning and Skills Council

Training Spending:

Size matters - the bigger the company the more likely they are to provide training.

Half of businesses with fewer than five employees and just over a fifth of those with 5-24 employees had not provided any training in the previous 12 months
More than nine-tenths of businesses with 25 or more staff had trained some of their employees over the previous 12 months.

Source: The National Employers Skills Survey 2005 (NESS) produced by the Learning and Skills Council

Extent of training provision:

Employers reported providing training to just over 13.1 million workers, (equivalent to three-fifths of the total current workforce), in the previous 12 months.
2.5 million staff, (19% of all trainees), were being trained towards a nationally recognised qualification.
Most employers that train provide training to the majority of their workforce
- 45% trained 90% or more of the current workforce
- 74% trained half or more of employees.

Source: The National Employers Skills Survey 2005 (NESS) produced by the Learning and Skills Council

The Employees’ perspective:

The Labour Force Survey, conducted by the Office for National statistics, asked individual employees about training offered by their current employer.
In 2005, 29% of employees said that they had never been offered any training by their current employer. (There has been no improvement in this trend since 2003).
69% of employees said that they had not received any job-related training in the previous three months.

Source: The Labour Force Survey 2005, conducted by the Learning and Skills Council

79% of employees agree that workplace basic skills training helps them do their current job better

Source: The 2005/06 Business in the Community Workplace Basic Skills survey

Health & Safety: Employees view

In 2004, MORI surveyed 2,002 working adults as part of an assessment of attitudes to Health & Safety. Employees were asked how much, if any, health and safety training have you received?

A great deal 25%
A fair amount 35%
Not very much 20%
None at all 20%

Source: Attitudes towards health and safety (HSE/MORI)

Estimated percentage of workers given training:

Lifting/carrying heavy loads by hand on own (73%)
Chemicals that could cause skin problem (65%)
Work at height (62%)
PC or laptop usage (62%)
Slip/trip (52%)
Driving Vehicles (52%)
Working around Vehicles (50%)
Hand-arm vibration (47%)
Dusts/fumes that could cause respiratory conditions (42%)
Whole Body vibration (41%)
Noise (33%)

Source: Health & Safety Executive compiled by risk category

Employees' confidence in training:

Employees find training valuable. The following show where employees are very/fairly confident that training will reduce the risk of harm.

Work at height (97%)
Driving Vehicles (97%)
Whole body vibration (94%)
Noise (92%)
Slip/trip (90%)
PC or laptop usage (90%)
Chemicals that could cause skin problem (87%)
Lifting/carrying heavy loads by hand on own (86%)
Dusts/fumes that could cause respiratory conditions (86%)
Hand-arm vibration (85%)

Source: Health & Safety Executive

UK skills base

The Leith Report, published in December 2006, was commissioned by the Government to assess the UK's long-term skills needs, arising from the 21st Century Skills White Paper.

The report concluded:

The number of working age people in England qualified to Level 2 (Five GCSEs or equivalent) has risen by over 1 million since 2003
The proportion of adults with a high qualification has risen from 21 per cent in 1994 to 29 per cent in 2005.
The proportion of people with no qualifications has nearly halved, down from 21 per cent to 13 per cent

However, it also recommended targets for the UK to achieve by 2020:

For basic functional numeracy and literacy: 95% of adults, up from 85 and 79% respectively in 2005
At level 2, 90% of adults, up from 69% in 2005
At level 3 (vocational and occupational qualifications): 1.9 million additional level 3 attainments over the period as well as an extra 0.5 million apprentices each year
At level 4 (university degrees and professional qualifications such as teaching and nursing): 40%, up from 29% in 2005.

The Government has launched a consultation on the Leith Report, and is expected to set out its plans for action during 2007.

Source: The Leith Report, Department for Education and Skills