In March 2010, the Cegos Observatory carried out a survey with over 2200 employees in businesses across the UK, France, Germany and Spain to shed light on staff perceptions of learning in business.

Overall the survey reveals that employees across Europe are highly motivated to develop their skills in the current economic climate - so much so that 76% are willing to give up their free time to undertake training and 53% are even prepared to part fund it. The survey looks at what motivates employees to learn, how the majority of employees are initiating their own training in the workplace and how e-learning and blended learning as well as emerging learning tools like podcasts, wikis, blogs, forums and webinars are more popular than ever.  

Key findings include:

• Training in Europe is employee-driven with most employees willing to make personal sacrifices to undertake it( in both time and finance), while 25% still do not receive training
• Training is seen as key to a pay rise in the current economic climate – 65% of employees are most motivated to develop their skills by the potential to increase their salary.
• UK managers the most involved in the training of their teams yet only 17% of managers across Europe are following-up on training initiatives afterwards.
• UK and Spain continue to lead the way with e-learning and blended learning with 53% and 41% of UK employees using these tools respectively.
• The use of podcasts, wikis, blogs, forums and webinars are more popular than ever with the UK leading the way with many of these tools with around a third of more of UK employees having used them in the workplace.

You can see the full results here.

3 observations:

• Recent reports from Capita highlight that inadequate L&D departments are holding back recovery with 50% of business leaders from some of the UK's largest organisations doubting L&D's ability to support their upturn strategy. However the Cegos research shows that there is a real hunger within individuals that matches the hunger of business itself (see the CBI report on business over the next 10 years). Surely this is a significant wake up call!!
  
• Our own research on learning innovation in business confirms many of the findings in the Cegos report -in our last benchmark podcasting tools, webinars were all rapidly growing ( something that appears to be continuting in our current benchmark programme) - highlighting that innovative L&D departments are starting to use tools that will allow them to respond more rapidly to changing business demand
  
• Whilst the UK and spain are leading the way with e-learning and blended learning - there is still a way to go (CIPD's research shows 85% of UK businesses now use e-learning but only 12% think it effective) and in our own benchmarks still less than 40% actively train their trainers on how to blend.

We really welcome this research by Cegos - another wake up call for L&D to become more responsive to both staff and business!

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