Here are some reasons why SMEs resist training
1) Most available training is aimed at large organisations. It’s over engineered and takes too long for the value that’s imparted. It’s also priced inappropriately. £500 for a 1 day Chartered Institute of Marketing course is just too much.
1) Too much of it is aimed at compliance. Corporate vendors are as bad as the government in making their distributors take over engineered one size fits all product training courses that are irrelevant. A decent sales refresher would be a better bet.
1) Most training providers have no clue about the balance of activities in a small business. In a large organisation strategy and tactics belong in different provinces in a small business they’re totally integrated. In IT, the official view is that there are users on the one hand and professionals on the other. WITH NOTHING IN BETWEEN. This is of course nonsense. There are tens of thousands of companies out there who have what can best be described as “IT paramedics” keeping the systems up. There is no training for them. e-skills continue to duck the issue. I once developed a suitable course which the punters liked but the ministry for the prevention of learning ( the LSC to you) withdrew the funding.
1) There is no funding. All of the adult education budget has been channelled to remedial reading and writing courses because the education system is broken. The recent Leitch report’s fundamental recommendation is that we should focus on this to pretty much the exclusion of everything else if we expect the UK to be competitive in 2020. You would have thought something about using technology effectively would be part of the mix but apparently not. And Leitch is the Chair of Zurich and should be expected to know better. This is certainly impacting student numbers for Chartered institute of marketing.
In summary most training available from the training industry is overpriced, irrelevant and over engineered.
The reality in a 10 man company is that you will do what you need to do to stay compliant and that’s as much an overhead as you can stand.
What will happen otherwise is that someone senior might go on a course and then train the others. In bite size chunks. Mixed in with the work. Digested and relevant. Backed up by the most powerful motivational tool known to man – the bacon sandwich.
Yes training motivates and retains staff – but you generally have to do it yourself as much of the available courses are neither use nor ornament.
You might gather from this that I have a dual perspective – as an owner manager of small businesses since 1981 which as part of their offerings have required me to develop and deliver training programmes usually in IT and marketing and usually for small businesses but sometimes for corporates who want to reach SMEs.
I think most trainers would benefit from understanding small business better and coming up with more appropriate material
but hey what do I know
Alan
