Training Development Essays

Training Development Essays Training Development Essay Training Development Essay Job casualisation and outsourcing have had a detrimental effect on the process of training and development. Some of the major factors that have contributed to this include, a large decreasing number of employees actually taking part in training, major threats to economic stability, decreasing organisational quality, increased levels of competitiveness, skill formations, and the need and the ability to adapt quickly to organisational change. This essay will outline the perspectives of the major stakeholders, comprising of the government, employers and employees and unions, it will show how these stakeholders feel against job casualisation and outsourcing and the negative effect it does have on training and development. Training can be defined as an activity, planned by an organisation, to facilitate the acquisition of skills, rules, concepts or attitudes that improve the performance of its employees (Smith, 1998:4). In New South Wales alone, the government contribution to training and development has decreased beyond astronomical levels, with a drop from 10 per cent to less then two per cent within a 10-year period, the main reason for this large decline is corporatisation and outsourcing (Pickersgill, 2001:125). It is quite evident from this large decline, that training is no longer one the of the major factors being focused on by the New South Wales State Government, and in fact if these levels continue to decrease rapidly, the state government will be left in a worse condition then they already are, with increased levels of lost productivity due to the decline in training expenditure provided by the government. In actual fact training funds have been underspent by over $200m over the past two years, indicating either a shortfall in funded training places or an ignorance of how the employer training system is funded (Connell Burgess, 2001:15). The casual density rate in the workforce has almost doubled in over a ten-year period, according to Campbell (2001) states that the casual density rate has almost doubled from 13. 3 per cent in 1982 to 26. 4 per cent in 1999 (p. 62). This considerable increase impacts on the government in two major ways. In the first instance, increased amounts of training costs have been targeted to the government from employees, and in the second instance, Australian competitiveness levels are in danger of reaching all time lows due to increased levels of outsourcing. Connell Burgess (2001) make emphasis to Pickergills (2001) point in his work that he argues that the data indicates private employers, on average have withdrawn from training investment, either further externalising training costs onto governments and/or individuals, or increasingly drawing on the stock of existing skills through outsourcing and labour hire (Connell Burgess, 2001:16). The attitude emphasised by employers, shows a lack of total dedication to their employees, this could have been caused by perspectives on increasing the profit level for their respective organisations and the elimination about concerns for the long-term effect this would have on the organisation, such as a lack of skills on the employees part or having relied to heavily on the external labour market in the past. Current government regulations need to be updated as major changes have occurred in the industrial relations framework, due to the lack of enthusiasm and monetary involvement from the government, both Federal and State about the levels of training. In the article by Curtain (2001), he explains that non-standard employees have a range of rights and responsibilities that the new employment arrangements require that are not me by the existing industrial relations system (p. 114). He mentions that some of these rights and responsibilities include- transition from education to work, re-employment after job loss, self employed to have equal rights as corporate employees, working times need to meet employees satisfaction, employers to expect that their employees have the skills to carry out their set tasks, and rights related to employer service deliverer responsibilities (ibid). There has been quite a large decline in expenditure for training. Campbell (2001) identifies this point that, casualisation and increased outsourcing may be one crucial factor behind this decline (p. 73). Campbell has indicated that casualisation and outsourcing has no positive impact on training at all, emphasising that it will only cause the Australian economy even more problems, due to lost productivity. Another very important issue that the Government should be taking a keen interest into is the unevenness to the access to employer support training. Curtain (2001) emphasises that as many as 80 per cent of casual employees say that they have fewer opportunities for training than permanent employees (p. 111). This would have to be one of the major causes for the decrease in training levels for casual employees.