Many firms are driven by short-term considerations (usually related to the need for compliance with mandatory regulations) and are ambivalent about training and skill development.
They see it as concerned primarily (if not exclusively) with obtaining basic qualifications, which are statutorily required to conduct a logistics business. If employers cannot train people to achieve these qualifications, they will normally ‘buy them in’ by using agency staff or ‘poaching’ staff from other firms.
The sizeable cost of relying on such solutions, both for individual firms and collectively across the industry, seems poorly understood.
So what now?
- Move companies away from the ad hoc purchase of training towards a culture of continuous professional development. The Professional Development Stairway will become the game board on which professional development can be played.
- Move the relationship between employers and training providers from ‘single, unconnected contracts’ to a ‘lifetime relationship’.
