Take it from someone who’s had his fair share of summer jobs — new hire training comes with the territory.  It seems like a no-brainer, right?  Once you start a new job, you have to learn what to do, get acclimated with environment and be taught “The [insert any company’s name] Way.”

Well, apparently this doesn’t apply to the construction industry over in Great Britain. According to Neil Gerrard at ConstructionJournal.com, a 2007 government study shows that one-third of British construction firms do not train their employees.

The government entity that conducted this study, The Learning and Skills Council, also found that 40% of the industry’s vacancies were due to a lack of on-the-job training, meaning that jobs went unfilled because no qualified candidate could be found.  Paul Holme, director of skills for employers at the Learning and Skills Council, insists that employers must use government-sponsored programs in order to fix this problem:

Our latest research shows that [the] Train to Gain [program] is helping to unlock staff potential through recommending and delivering relevant, job-specific training. I urge more organisations to follow suit and get involved and see the benefits of investing in training for the long-term.

In the end, his statement strikes at the overarching lesson from this study:  In the long run, the benefits from a competent workforce will be well worth the short-term headaches associated with training them. Keep that in mind the next time your bosses balk at the notion of paying for a training seminar on the construction software that you use.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 3:20 pm and is filed under Construction industry news and trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.