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Press Release

Business calls on education and skills sector to shape up

Tuesday 3 October 2006

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) today called on the Government and its skills agencies to get their act together and stop passing the buck when it comes to training employees of small firms.

The Prime Minister, speaking at the Labour Party Conference and before that the Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA), hit out at small firms for not training their staff.

The FSB believes it is unfair to say that small businesses are failing to invest in employee training. The average FSB member has 4 employees. Structured off-site training would lead to 25% of the workforce being absent. This would be unsustainable for any business regardless of size. There is little understanding of why training is so difficult to undertake for micro and small businesses.

Businesses want to train their workers so that their processes become more efficient, profits can be increased and the workforce is satisfied to aid retention of staff.

The FSB’s 2006 member survey found that:

With financial assistance offered, 52% of members would pursue even more training for their staff;
Wage compensation for employees on training would encourage 37% of respondents to commit to more training; and
If the quality of training were improved, 40% of employers would seek further training for their employees

Colin Willman, FSB National Skills Chairman, said:

“Recently we have had everyone from the Prime Minister to the Sector Skills Development Agency claiming that small firms do not carry out enough training for their staff.

“To us this seems like a case of passing the buck. The Prime Minister was elected on the back of a promise to reform education but our members often have to pick up the pieces of the failing school system. New, school-leaver employees often cannot even read, write or add up to a decent standard.

“Further problems then arise because the organisations charged with assisting firms to provide skills training for their staff, such as the SSDA, do not appreciate the situation in which small businesses find themselves. They need training, tailored to their needs, in the workplace. This is not widely on offer at the moment and until it is the blame for lower levels of skills and training in small firms cannot be laid at the door of the employers. The Government and their publicly-funded skills agencies have to get their acts together first.”



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Federation of Small Businesses

Federation of Small Businesses

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