1.4. Plans for 2008

There are both internal and external reasons why companies are willing to increase the amount of training made available to employees in 2008. Companies are confident they can achieve competitive advantage through training employees, upgrading key competencies of their human resources, diversifying operations, to name a few. Outside influence usually comes from competition and changing of the macro environment. The prevalence of training increases for 2008 is not very difficult to understand - it is the Olympic spirit. Please refer to the Figure 9 below.

Training buyers usually have clear plans for training in 2008. Middle Managers are still the
focus – 66% of the research participants plan to increase spending on this particular group of
employee, with no regard to whether they are high potentials or not. High Potentials (across
different levels of corporate structure) are considered to be the second important group (37%),
closely followed by First-line Supervisors (36%). Every third company plans to increase
spending on Sales Employees and Senior Managers. Please refer to Figure 10 below.

Companies usually provide in-house training programs for their most senior executive development; where proprietary issues are at hand especially with unique technical applications; and for new entry employees. Where core proprietary content and corporate culture is not of essence outsourcing is an attractive consideration. Again, the unique content of training varies from company to company, as corporate customers have a vested interest which they like to maintain. For example, companies are usually willing to purchase foreign language training. These however, are the simplest conclusions to be drawn. There are companies that do not outsource training at all, and at the same time, there are also companies that outsource all their training. Instead of chasing a percentage, let’s focus on the categories. A clear picture is presented on Figure 11 below.

The majority of companies are going to outsource Leadership and Strategic Management training. The second most popular outsourced training area is training for middle managers, which is followed by Language training and Interpersonal Skills. More than one-third of the surveyed companies are willing to purchase training for Sales, Coaching and Project Management.

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