UK needs to rethink approach to workplace learning, study finds

11 May 2009

Pushing ever-growing numbers of UK workers through vocational qualification courses will do little to help the country emerge from the economic recession, a five-year study has concluded.

Instead, companies should be encouraged to re-organise their working practices so that staff have more opportunities to learn on the job, exercise their discretion, problem-solve and work in teams, says a group of leading researchers.

The researchers, who worked in sandwich-making factories, took part in fitness classes and analysed automobile-component manufacture as part of their study, believe that British workers are taking too many certificated courses that are unrelated to businesses' real needs.

"All too often learning is regarded as something separate from work itself and is seen solely in terms of formal episodes of 'training' that can be counted and costed – the bean-counting approach," says Professor Lorna Unwin of the Institute of Education, London, one of the study's authors. "All work involves and generates learning, but this is not always recognised by either the public or private sectors."

The researchers argue that the global 'credit crunch' means that innovative ways must be found to help employers create the conditions in which learning can flourish. However, Professor Unwin and her co-authors from the universities of Cardiff and Southampton say this will only happen if there is a deeper understanding of individual companies' operations.

They also call for a generous spoonful of realism. "Where strategies to enhance shareholder value are achieved by means of job intensification and asset-stripping, investment in long-term, sustainable learning environments for employees is likely to be a low priority," they say in a book launched this week.

Establishing who really exerts control over a workplace is also essential, they add, because this may determine the forms of learning that are possible. The researchers cite the example of aerobics instructors taking pre-choreographed exercise-to-music classes for a company that operates thousands of venues around the world. Unlike "freestyle" fitness instructors who choose their own music and devise their own routines, instructors delivering pre-choreographed lessons are simply expected to follow the set music and exercises. The result is that classes use the same work-outs in Swansea, Stirling or Singapore.

Various UK studies suggest that the fitness instructors' situation is by no means unique. There has been little change in the amount of individual discretion that workers have been given in recent years, the researchers say. Moreover, there is evidence that the proportion of employees working in teams with decision-making powers has fallen sharply.

The researchers suggest that the Government could help to address such problems if it was less fixated on the number of qualification-holders. Its strategy creates pressure on business-sector training bodies because they too are judged by qualification-led targets, they say.

The study's authors also have serious reservations about England's "learning and skills sector", which includes the many institutions and bodies charged with raising skills levels. "What was once a collection of disparate bodies jostling for the right to serve and influence employers has itself become a many-headed bureaucratic hydra, which, in turn, devours part of the funding intended for the 'real' economy," the researchers comment.

Improving Working as Learning, by Alan Felstead, Alison Fuller, Nick Jewson and Lorna Unwin, is published by Routledge, priced £21.99.

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